Amazing portrayal of Hemingway in 'In Love and War'
Amazing portrayal of Hemingway in 'In Love and War'
By Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan
JAKARTA (JP): The New Yorker's Anthony Lane compared cinema to
souffle: light and fluffy if you do it quickly, leathery and
sunken if you don't.
Well, there is another category: cinema as emotional epic,
courtesy of The English Patient.
Sir Richard Attenborough, whose credits include Gandhi and
Shadowlands may be well placed to attempt an American equivalent
("The American Patient"?) yet what comes out is a very sunken
souffle.
Not only is it dull as ditchwater, it sheds little light on
what is supposed to be its subject matter.
One thing is certain. Ernest Hemingway cannot be blamed,
even if he is at the heart of it all.
The script we're talking about is, of course, In Love and War,
adapted from Hemingway in Love and War: The secret diaries of
Agnes von Kurowsky by Henry S. Villard and James Nagel.
Yet the problem lies not so much with validity as a nagging
disbelief that, young or otherwise, the man who, according to
Saul Bellow, "changed the way Americans talked and the way
Americans wrote" could be so ... immature.
That is, of course, if we believe in Agnes von Kurowsky's
account, or rather, Chris O'Donnell's and Sandra Bullock's
interpretation of it.
As she would have us believe, her relationship with a very
young and very earnest Ernest during World War I hadn't only
formed the basis of his most famous work, Farewell to Arms, but
also transformed him into the embittered, sardonic guy who
became, arguably, America's most celebrated writer.
Wounded in Italy in 1918 as a volunteer for the American Field
Service, the 18-year-old Hemingway, then a journalist for the
Kansas City-based Star, fell in love with von Kurowsky, a Red
Cross nurse who lovingly tended to his gangrenous and festering
leg. As they embarked on a complicated, tumultuous relationship,
the strains of war and their eight year age difference finally
took its toll.
This chapter of Hemingway's life is well-documented, although
there has never been any mention of von Kurowsky. "I died then,"
said Hemingway once in recollection of the time when 237
fragments of sawed-off steel rods filled his legs as he was
handing chocolate bars to Italian soldiers in their trenches.
Prior to that, boosting the morale of Italian troops in the
wake of the Austrian onslaught might have seemed like fun.
The mystique of courage has always been central to
Hemingway's literary persona, in his life or fiction. Taking
risks was second nature, whether through boxing, betting horses,
befriending escaped convicts and gangsters, even playing with
bulls at close range. As Alfred G. Aronowitz and Peter Hamill
wrote in a 1961 biography, "He flirts with the danger of them
all."
But if we accept a hidden part in Hemingway's life that only
intimate accounts can provide, it would be nice to see some
semblance of him left over.
A certain youthful cockiness may be in order, yet what Chris
O'Donnell does is beyond belief. If one talks egregious
miscasting, as Movie Line did recently, Sandra Bullock can heave
a sigh of relief for coming second, not first.
O'Donnell does his best to convince us that he is, in fact,
a character, but he's out of his depth. Smirking and grinning
like there's no tomorrow, he brings not an ounce of depth or
gravity to the role.
Portraying Earnest Hemingway as an naive, gung-ho
idealist,is one thing but presenting him as whipped-cream-and-
chocolate fop and hoping we'll fall for it is another.
The brutalities of war and the imperfections of humanity
don't seem to interest O'Donnell very much. No trace of love
glimmers in his eyes as he pursues his Great Love despite
competition from doctor Caracciolo (Emilio Bonucci) and his own
mate, Henry Villard who co-wrote the novel. Here O'Donnell is
just a pin-up guy trying to kill time before donning the Robin
suit.
Portraying the disillusioned Hemingway as a raging bull during
the movie's finale doesn't help either. What could have been
poignant becomes farcical, as the strong whiff of futility in
earlier scenes becomes a fully airborne virus.
What was intended as antidote to blockbusteritis makes us
yearn for Batman and Robin.
Worse, O'Donnell and pesky Sandra Bullock make one of the
great no-sparks couples in recent cinema. Despite a price tag of
over US$10 million maturity is not her strong point. Although
credible enough as an object of male affections, Bullock is an
actress of limited range who is entirely ill-suited to play a
woman who inspired great literature.
Much as we want to believe her flat pledge; "I love you. I
will always love you" to an equally colorless O'Donnell, we just
can't.
But, to be fair, the blandness of the whole enterprise gives
the actors very little to work with- no emotions, no obsessions,
no introspection, no drama. The script by Allan Scott, Clancy
Sigal and Anna Hamilton Phelan is shallow and banal, plonking
scenes onto their designated places like trench mortars, never
bothering to provide additional background, let alone history.
Roger Pratt's cinematography is warm and pleasing, but never
breathtaking. The music by George Fenton is gorgeous on its own,
but mostly vanishes in the face of vapid mis-en-scene. The
dialogue is passable, but never witty or engaging.
If Attenborough is trying to put a new stamp on the genre,
trading Anthony Minghella's rich nuances for flat editing,
exquisite subtleties for limp insinuations, artistry for
mundanity, inspiration for monotony, character actors with box-
office actors, then thank God for Frederic Henry and Catherine
Barkley in Farewell to Arms.