‘Hemingway & Gellhorn’

By Jacqueline Cutler © Zap2it

The opening shot focuses on an old woman’s strong, lined face. It is the unadorned visage of Martha Gellhorn, a trailblazing correspondent who covered the front lines when women didn’t. Nicole Kidman portrays her, and Clive Owen is Ernest Hemingway in HBO’s “Hemingway & Gellhorn,” airing Monday, May 28.

With the sun pouring through the windows behind her, only Kidman’s bright blue eyes bear any resemblance to that old woman. Kidman kicks off her Jimmy Choos as she sips cocoa, describing Gellhorn as “this brave, intrepid, passionate woman.”

The movie took executive producer James Gandolfini six years to bring to the screen, and director Philip Kaufman, in his first movie for television, explores how the writers met, fell in love, covered the world’s main events and fought until they had to split.

Robert Duvall shows up briefly as a fascist flunky who comes within seconds of a deadly duel with Hemingway. Tony Shalhoub and David Strathairn, as writers Mikhail Kolstov and John Dos Passos, turn in excellent performances.

The movie does a terrific job of illustrating history — to which Hemingway and Gellhorn had a front seat — against their incendiary relationship.

Like most people, Kidman says, “I had heard of Hemingway. Of course I read ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’ I had no idea who she was. I so wanted to do her justice.”

As Kidman learned about Gellhorn, “I was blown away. I just thought she was remarkable.”

Gellhorn was. Despite being a magnificent war correspondent into her 80s, she is remembered mostly as Hemingway’s third wife. She was a reluctant wife.

When Hemingway and his second wife divorced so he and Gellhorn could marry, Gellhorn says, “I have a horror of a marriage. I would rather sin respectably.”

Hemingway responds, “I would rather make an honest woman of you.”

Though the film begins with Gellhorn in her elder years — for which Kidman spent four hours in makeup — it mostly features her as young, sexy and incredibly vibrant. That’s how she sashayed across Sloppy Joe’s, a Key West bar, in 1936, aware that every man there, including Hemingway, was watching her, desiring her.

Wearing a black suit and white shirt and looking dapper, Owen has since shed the weight he gained to play Hemingway. “It was quite nice eating and drinking whatever you want,” he says. “I can have some big nights out on the drink, and this is for work!”

When Kaufman sent him the script, Owen cleared his schedule of everything else.

“I traveled to Havana. When he died, his wife donated the house to the Cuban government,” Owen says.

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He saw Hemingway’s clothes, boots, books and jazz records. Owen spoke to people who knew about Hemingway and Gellhorn, he read his works, and he listened to an iPod loaded with every recording of Hemingway’s voice.

Web Links

After last season’s big wedding, Season 8 of “Gene Simmons Family Jewels,” launching Monday on A&E Network, has a lot to live up to. www.aetv.com/genesimmons-family-jewels/

The home page for the Indianapolis 500, which airs Sunday on ABC, offers a kids club, history, a blog and more. To get up to date, click on www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com/indy500/