With Papa and Mary Hemingway, I had the same reservations that I had with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo--they were all drunks. A drunk is never charming, fun, witty, intelligent, or genius. They are just drunks! "Papa: Ernest Hemingway in Cuba", records the time 1959 just before the Fidel Castro Revolution. Ernest Hemingway is a gun runner and evades the Cuban Police by throwing his guns overboard.
Boston Globe Journalist Denne Bart Petitclerc writes a fan letter to Hemingway and is befriended by Hemingway and invited down to Cuba. He probably learns more of Ernest and Mary Hemingway than he wanted to know.
But by this time in Cuba, Hemingway's paranoia leads him to believe people are out to harm the 59 year old Hemingway who by now is drinking to excess, is engaging in suicidal ideation with his gun, can no longer write, can no longer have sex, and suffering the effects of alcohol abuse.
While the movie is ostensibly about Papa Hemingway, the movie is also about Denne Bart Petitclerc who had been raised as an orphan during the Great Depression. So in Papa, a name he was called by everyone, Denne Bart Petitclerc has found a new surrogate Papa. And this Papa doesn't hesitate to slug Denne when learns that Denne had been seen speaking to Mafioso Santo Trafficanti. And Denne ends up in the middle of the drunken arguments of Mary and Ernest Hemingway. Worse, he has to wrestle a gun from Papa, who is about to commit suicide with it. Denne leaves Cuba and discovers that his wife has left him for his excessive devotion to Papa that takes him away from her. And Denne has to decide what is more important: a drunk, self-destructive, finished artist or his wife. There is no resolution in the film and the viewer is left to wonder what happened to his marital relationship. (Outside sources say Denne went in 1960 to Ketchum Idaho and stayed there till his death in 2006.)
At the end of the movie, the print over announces that Hemingway committed suicide (with his shotgun) in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961--at aged 61.
The movie was fast paced with an aura of realism to it. Denne wrote a story about the friendship and was preparing a movie script before he died of lung cancer in 2006, age 77. (Smoking the other bête noire of abuse.) For anyone who is fan of Hemingway, this sheds an interesting perspective of the writer at the end of his creative life and his life.
Boston Globe Journalist Denne Bart Petitclerc writes a fan letter to Hemingway and is befriended by Hemingway and invited down to Cuba. He probably learns more of Ernest and Mary Hemingway than he wanted to know.
But by this time in Cuba, Hemingway's paranoia leads him to believe people are out to harm the 59 year old Hemingway who by now is drinking to excess, is engaging in suicidal ideation with his gun, can no longer write, can no longer have sex, and suffering the effects of alcohol abuse.
While the movie is ostensibly about Papa Hemingway, the movie is also about Denne Bart Petitclerc who had been raised as an orphan during the Great Depression. So in Papa, a name he was called by everyone, Denne Bart Petitclerc has found a new surrogate Papa. And this Papa doesn't hesitate to slug Denne when learns that Denne had been seen speaking to Mafioso Santo Trafficanti. And Denne ends up in the middle of the drunken arguments of Mary and Ernest Hemingway. Worse, he has to wrestle a gun from Papa, who is about to commit suicide with it. Denne leaves Cuba and discovers that his wife has left him for his excessive devotion to Papa that takes him away from her. And Denne has to decide what is more important: a drunk, self-destructive, finished artist or his wife. There is no resolution in the film and the viewer is left to wonder what happened to his marital relationship. (Outside sources say Denne went in 1960 to Ketchum Idaho and stayed there till his death in 2006.)
At the end of the movie, the print over announces that Hemingway committed suicide (with his shotgun) in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961--at aged 61.
The movie was fast paced with an aura of realism to it. Denne wrote a story about the friendship and was preparing a movie script before he died of lung cancer in 2006, age 77. (Smoking the other bête noire of abuse.) For anyone who is fan of Hemingway, this sheds an interesting perspective of the writer at the end of his creative life and his life.