I love this movie so much

Better Late Then Never

The acting in this movie is really good.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

If you know nothing about Martha Gellhorn then you should definitely see this uneven movie. She was a war correspondent, among other things, in the 20th century The film uses Zelig-like effects to insert the lovers into history, often in black and white. The film ends rather abruptly showing Hemingway's end, but not Gellhorn's. The film is overlong. Again, worth a look as an introduction to Gellhorn.

HBO's 'Gellhorn and Hemingway', a bio picture, is 155 minutes in running time. The story of Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway might have deserved better treatment as a straightforward documentary than a film made for television and the widescreen. Nicole Kidman is Gellhorn and the talented but underrated Clive Owen is Hemingway. There is no other way to call them since they are strong personalities and unstoppable in the pursuit of fame and fortune, love and war. No, they aren't the Martha and George of Albee's 'Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf', but they, each in their own way, seem indestructible personalities, immovable objects that in the end proved incompatible. The fires of passion ignite from the moment Gellhorn meets Hemingway in Sloppy Joe's bar in Havana Cuba in the mid-1930s. The crucible of strong and barely controllable emotion flare up in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Gellhorn proves an apt pupil who learns her craft of writing during war from Hemingway, and she is the inspiration for Maria in his homage to the people of Spain and the International Brigades who fought for the Spanish Republic against the fascist Franco and his Nazi and Italian allies. Were this a simple roll in the hay during the bombing of Madrid, Philip Kaufman's film would be simply another banal love story. It is not. He uses vintage newsreel of the fighting, the street life of Madrid during bombings, the exuberant attach to life in the face of overwhelming odds that the legitimate Republic would prevail against the fascists, with antiquated arms, motley crew of volunteers from Europe, Canada and the US, whose governments imposed an embargo on aid to the democratic government of Spain. Only Soviet Russia offered arms and aid, which complicated the glue that seemed to hold Republic Spain together--democratic, anarchist and communist. In a way, it is a quick study of the people who went to Spain: Joris Ivans who made the sharply strong and powerful 'Spanish Earth' that Hemingway narrated; the photographer Robert Capra, the writer John Dos Passos, whom left a sour taste in Hemingway's mouth. (Dos Passos was less enthusiastic about Hemingway's 'To Have and Have Not', a critique that didn't set lightly on the author's ego.) The interplay of personal rivalry, bravado and love making, more than anything that makes the drama of the first act to World War II vivid and realistic and more or less faithful to the era and the narrative. Biden by the war bug that ultimately will break the marriage of Gellhorn and Hemingway, Kidman as 'Marty' rushes off to cover that small war of Finland's resistance to Russian invasion 1939, in a land grab following the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Gellhorn at the Finnish front tested the couple's union: Hemingway wanted a woman at home to care for his every whim. Gellhorn, as the daughter of a suffragette, was not cut out for that stay at home role. With an assignment to go to China, Gellhorn takes Hemingway along. He seems less enthralled but goes along; his wife is the star even though his reputation precedes him. In brief scenes, Kaufman manages to recreate the squalor and horror of the Japanese war against China; he even manages to convey the brute strength of Chinese coolies during the difficult and tiring journey on the Yangtze, as though it had come out of John Hersey's 'A Single Pebble'. The HBO film had its lighter but macabre moment when the couple meet Chiang Kai Shek and his wife the American-educated Soong Mai Ling, Mme. Chiang. Nonetheless, it was the coverage of the opening of the second front in the Europe theater of war that broke the marriage, Collier's Magazine regularly employed Gellhorn as a war correspondent, but the lure of Hemingway's name made the magazine appoint him as correspondent for the landing of Allied troops in France. Gellhorn felt betrayed and cleverly devised a way to stow away on a troop ship of nurses, and thus became the first correspondent to go ashore with the troops on D Day. Meanwhile Hemingway found his fourth wife Mary and ended up wounded in the hospital after a night of heavy drinking in a car accident. And here ends the saga of Gellhorn and Hemingway as Kaufman ties up loose ends: Hemingway's suicide and 30 years later with David Frost interviewing Gellhorn, who has not lost her spunk and hard edge as she prepares on the cusp of 90 to cover yet another war. The film does show the fear of loss of manlihood and his loss of sexual and mental prowess. The narrative is told from Kidman's point of view, which is more faithful to the record. Owen gives a good portrait of Hemingway's lust for life and vanity and his unstoppable genius at writing until it is hinted he descended into dementia.

Hemingway and gall horn tried to force the story and structure of the movie down your throat. its starts with gall horn ( Nicole kid man) getting interviewed, talking about the good Ole days, before she met gall horn, it goes back and you know because it instantly changes to black and white, and Hemingway (clive Owen) is fishing. the director wanted us to know that Hemingway wasn't a sophisticated writer, but a manly, tough brute with a writing talent. he forced us to acknowledge that by showing Hemingway, with a big cigar hanging out of his mouth, talking manly, using his Strong to reel in a big fish to the when the fish is aboard punches it in the head till it starts bleeding, to exaggerate the blood the blood is red although everything else is black and white. Hemingway has fish and animal trophy's from hunting and fishing all around his pub, gall horn comes in, they meet and a day later they are both off to Spain to fight in the war? and it wasn't like it was love at first sight gall horn admitted in the movie there was a moment she knew she was in love but that was at least 50 minutes more into the film. yes gall horn was a writer and in movies that usually means spontaneous, but that was her character and again thought was forced down our throats. prior to watching the movie, after you've looked at the movie length, then start the film then it is evident that the director is going for a movie in the style of once upon a time in America, or Gandhi, but this movie would never amount to those films although thats what was gone for. the first half of the movie is quite enjoyable and entertaining, like a TV show it is driven by tension of love and usually in a TV show when the love tension has been satisfied by sex or even the fact of the viewer knowing they are a couple, the show spirals into a conclusion.in Hemingway and gall horn once the love tension is satisfied the stupid movie doesn't go anywhere. the impact of the demise of the love (marriage) is forced down out throat (although that is predictable from the start)with quotes from gellhorn such as " life shouldn't be so perfect" and a lot others similar. as a TV show this would be great, a season of love tension, then another, then sex,marriage and true love in the second last episode of season 3, and everything in the movie that half of it was based on, that goes nowhere, somehow make it exciting and make it the final episode. this movie is OK i guess, but very very very poorly structured.

"I will not be a footnote to someone else's life," says Martha Gellhorn to the camera in her face. Sadly, because of the mess of the script, no POV in the plot and scenes that go nowhere, Gellhorn actually does become a footnote to Hemmingway. I know less about her now after suffering through 2 1/2 hours than I did before. This was a Netflix waste of my time.Martha Gellhorn is an old woman recalling her life. But the film begins with how she met Hemmingway. What did she do prior to meeting Hemmingway? Her story then ends with their divorce. The rest of her life and his a brief wrap up. Well, if you don't want her to be defined by her relationship with him, why start and end with Hemmingway? And oh dear they spend way too much time drinking, smoking, dancing, partying and having sex in the Spanish Civil War. I agree with another reviewer who mocked their first sex scene while the hotel room is falling down around them during a bombing! Good grief, with her legs up in the air over his shoulders, ugh, nothing romantic or passionate about that scene at all!!! I thought the entire film was going to play out over the civil war it dragged on so long. Seemed like it would never end. Characters popped up and disappeared with no explanation.Meanwhile it's one mind-numbing war is hell scene after another,("If it's Tuesday this must be Belgium?"), with no time in between to breathe and rest and know about their lives. I get it, they were war correspondents. But what else did they do with their lives? Their life together? If they didn't mention Hemmingway's famous novels you'd never know what he wrote during their brief time together. Ultimately I didn't care about either of these people. The performances were really hard to take. You could see them acting not living these characters. However, considering the dialog they had, well, what else could they do? When Gellhorn first meets Hemmingway in that bar, Clive, trying to be tough guy charming, nearly began to sound like Bogart! Ugh. This one just got away from everyone. I don't know whose fault it was, the writers, the director (oh those auteur changes!?)or the producers, but I think it's safe to say there's plenty of blame to spread around.Two thumbs down as Ebert and Roper would say.