Again, A Year Or Two
With Ernest-“Papa: Hemingway In Cuba” (2015)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Film Critic Emeritus
Sam Lowell
[I will not bore the
reader with yet again a detailed rationale for my recent taking myself “out to
pasture,” retiring with the caveat that if I found something that interested me
in the film world I reserved the right to comment via a timely review. Not as
my erstwhile fellow film critic, Sandy Salmon, whom I cajoled into taking over
the day to day chores at this site while he too waited to fade into the sunset
of retirement, stated in his review of this same film when “the spirit moved
me” which he falsely accused me of stealing from the Quakers who hardly had a
copyright on the expression if Sandy would have known if he had been out in the
real world over the past fifty years. Shockingly in taking over the job Sandy has
needed the support of an associate, Alden Riley, to do the heavy legwork (like
actually watching the films to be reviewed, grabbing summaries from Wikipedia
maybe stealing some lines from reviews on Amazon, writing the first draft so I
am not sure exactly what Sandy’s role is in all this). Up until the end I has
done all that myself.
But I will let that pass
as well since today I feel I need to say a few words about why I am doing a
review of a film Sandy with a big assist from Alden who had to read from scratch
some of Hemingway’s short stories which apparently neither he nor Sandy had
read or more probably in Sandy’s case had not read in fifty years, already put
in the can, Papa: Hemingway In Cuba,
a semi-biopic of the old man who had so much influence on our generation of
guys who liked to write, who liked that smooth clean sparse language while
pushing on the story line without a lot of embellishment. For one of the few
times in recent memory Sandy, once he found out the film was slated for review,
and I watched the presentation together (Alden watched it later when he was
assigned the heavy legwork). That is where the current tempest in a teapot got
its start.
As Sandy stated in his
review he and I had gravitated toward Hemingway in our respective high school
days and never left that admiration behind. Although we both agreed that the
story presented on film while gripping in parts had been overwrought about the
emotional traumas Hemingway was going through as he aged, aged not gracefully
ending upon the other end of a self-imposed shotgun blast we argued over who
would do the review. Frankly I invoked my “seniority,” my emeritus status since
the mere subject matter of the film, what did Sandy call it, what do the poor
besieged Quakers call it, oh yeah, got me in a “the spirit moves me” mood.
The long and short of it
was that Sandy went to the site administrator, Pete Markin, to complain that
that “old geezer” was stepping on his toes. Pete brought us into his “office”
which did not help much since the scene got a little ugly. I reminded Sandy,
Sandy, bigtime film critic for the American
Film Gazette back in the day that I had to tell him who Orson Welles was,
who had produced Citizen Kane, what it
was about and where it stood in the pantheon of world classic films when he had
first started out in the business. Had to remind Sandy too that he was the one
who wrote that glowing review about Planet
of the Apes and how it was a sure bet to win, get this, the Oscar for Best
Picture that year (and I think for Best Actor too and it was not Charlton
Heston who he was touting). The film critic fraternity laughed about that one
for years at our annual gatherings. From
there only got worse until I let sleeping dogs lie and told Pete too let Sandy
have his damn review.
Then the review came out
and I could not believe that we had watched the same film. Couldn’t understand
why Sandy did not take on Hemingway’s alcoholism, his taunting of his fourth,
count them fourth wife, Mary and the severity of his writer’s block in the decisive period just a couple of years before
he took his own life. Worse, worse of all Sandy only paid perfunctory mention to
one of the great stories of the time, the Fidel Castro led guerilla war fight
against the hated Batista regime in Cuba the results which still reverberates
to this day. He totally failed to mention the scene where Papa and his young
writer friend and acolyte (Ed in the movie) had doggedly come to grips as
witnesses to a battle in the city between those two forces just like Papa had
in the old days in Spain. I complained to Pete and he, pulling his hair out yet
again, agreed that I could give “my take” on the film. See Pete knew, or I will
assume that he knew, who was the guy to have done this review in the first
place. Sam Lowell]
Papa: Hemingway in Cuba,
starring Giovanni Ribisi, Joely Richardson, Adrian Sparks, filmed in Cuba,
2015
I have to agree with the
esteemed regular film critic in this space that there was no question young
men, and I have to agree with him on this as well maybe women too but Ernest
Hemingway by subject matter and by reputation seemed to be the quintessential
man’s man writer for good or evil, of the generation before mine and of my own
generation who had a taste for the literary life saw him (along with Scott
Fitzgerald on his good days, his The Great Gatsby good days)
as the paragon of solid sparse writing that drew us in. Writing up a storm
about the futility of World War I, the post-war alienation of the Jazz Age
which his friend and fellow exile Scotty Fitzgerald practically invented,
bullfighting in the hot afternoon in some drunken corrida, the glorious
struggle in Spain where there appeared to be time enough to make the earth
shake not just with mortars but with love and a million other short stories
some of which made their way into film (and reviews by me, and, okay, okay
Sandy).
Funny as a kid I first
gravitated toward Hemingway via the movies although I didn’t actually know that
until later when I happened to read one of his short stories The Killers which had been made into a
movie (actually two one in 1946 but the one I am thinking of is the version
done in 1962 with Lee Marvin and, ah, Ronald Reagan who later parlayed that
role in the film as a connected gangster into the presidency of the United
States or something like that. When I viewed that film one Saturday afternoon at
the old Strand Theater in my growing up hometown I felt I knew the story line
and lo and behold in the credits they noted that the thing was based on Papa’s
short story of the same name. Talk about cinematic license though (and in that
1946 version as well since the story is only a few pages long and is only a
“teaser” about a guy who took a couple of slugs without grumbling when a couple
of hit men came a calling and the story unfolds from that slight hint of a
start).
Like Sandy as a kid
anything to do with Hemingway was like catnip and while I usually did my
reading during the daytime on many a late night I devoured whatever I could get
my hands on at the local branch of the town library. So when Sandy and I saw
this film under review together, Papa: Hemingway In Cuba, we
almost came to blows about who would review the thing. [See the introduction
above for the gory details. Pete Markin] That emotional response on our parts despite
the fact that both of us agreed that the film itself seemed kind of maudlin and
less than informative as a slice of life
semi-biopic.
Naturally since the film
is not an actual full biopic about either Hemingway or the young writer, Denn
Bart Petticlerc, whose memoir the film is based on the producers used plenty of
cinematic license in translating that story to the screen (just as any
self-respecting writer would use a great deal of literary license to the same
effect). What was interesting and might have been of interest to me knowing
what happened in the film Ed, the name for Denn in the film, was that he and
Papa met after Ed had sent Papa a “love letter” and he responded by inviting
him to Cuba for a little off-hand fishing (one of about twenty “manly” pursuits
like boxing which writers like Norman Mailer in the generation after his felt
compelled to follow as a mantra for their own writing prowess, bullfighting,
safari hunting, deep sea fishing, amateur gun-fighting and seemingly every
other on the edge activity except bocce which he never did master for some
reason. Hemingway was into “action” in
an age when men had to such pursuits to internally prove their manhood rather
than like in my generation the more rationale reason to impress the girls. We
always on a no dough, no girl Friday or Saturday night hanging around with
nothing better to do used to speculate that all that manly-proving frenzy meant
he might have been as we used to say “light on his feet.” I never heard
anything that way and I am sure I would have in some be misbegotten doctoral
thesis if there was any substance to the charge.) Damn I wish I had had the
moxie, the balls to send the old man a “love letter” and maybe I would have had
the opportunity to learn how to fish (and skinny dip).
In any case the
mentor-surrogate son relationship that developed was something very different
once a young writer (Ed Myers in the film played by Giovanni Ribisi) caught the
attention of Ernest Hemingway (played by Adrian Spark who looked the very image
of Papa when I looked at some old photographs). Hell Ed would fly back and
forth to Miami at the drop of a hat on Papa’s summons if for no other reason
than to go skinny-dipping in Papa’s pool or to sit drinking pina colas while
Hemingway sucked up the real booze and got nasty at his fourth wife Mary. (That
four marriage should have been the tip-off, take it from a guy with three
unsuccessful marriages under his belt and has finally given up that chase, that
Papa was not an easy guy to live with any more than I was).
Of course Hemingway
seemingly spent half of his life in some kind of exile Paris, Africa,
Idaho, or out of America anyway and Cuba
was his home along with his fourth wife, the well-known foreign correspondent
Mary Welsh, played by Joely Richardson, for a good portion of the last twenty
or so years of his life. Funny 1958, 1959 in Cuba was like some kind of fateful
muse in the period when Papa and Ed were friendly which also happened to be a
time when the Cuban Revolution, Castro’s guerilla fighters, were coming down
from the hills to confront Batista and his forces in the cities. It might be
worth checking out what Batista’s agents thought of Hemingway rolling around the
gin mills of the island having made it clear that he had been in Spain when the
deal went down there in the 1930s. In a compelling scene Papa and Ed are “doing
the do,” doing what any journalist worth his or her salt would do and go out
get the story especially as the Castro forces were coming out of the hills so
you knew at that point the regime’s days were short, extremely short so you had
best get the story of history in the making or forget it.
As already noted this
film suffered from some overwrought emotional scenes of Hemingway in decline,
in a love-hate relationship with Mary which seemed cruelty itself on both their
parts at time. The real shocker for any writer, even Sandy took note of the
fact in passing and then blew it off, though was Hemingway’s frustration that
he could no longer write, had “writer’s block” the dreaded words that every
writer, pro or amateur, wakes up in the midnight hour sweating about. Where the
whole ball of wax comes down is when Ed was sending in copious copy to his
newspaper and Papa was standing around his typewriter, the word processor of
the day, almost paralyzed with a drink of rye whisky to buck him up. Damn. Papa
had the shakes that way too. Sandy did have it right maybe Papa had lost it at
the end but go read A Farewell To
Arms, The Sun Also Rises, For Whom The Bells Toll, and The
Old Man and The Sea if you want to know what it was like when Papa had
the words, when he wrote those sparse clean words for keeps. For the young you
heard it here first.
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