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Episodes
Ernest Hemingway volunteers for the Red Cross during World War I and publishes his first two novels.
Ernest Hemingway reports on the Spanish Civil War and begins a stormy romance with Martha Gellhorn.
Hemingway follows the Army as they advance through Europe. Afterwards, he tries to start a life with Mary Welsh, but is beset with tragedies. He publishes The Old Man and the Sea to acclaim but is overcome by his declining mental condition.
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News & Interviews for Hemingway: Season 1
Critic Reviews for Hemingway Season 1
All Critics (21) | Top Critics (12) | Fresh (19) | Rotten (2)
It's a documentary interested in showing the author, warts and all, and giving audiences the opportunity to look at how all these elements made up a man whose works are pieces of art.
It's not just the details unearthed here that make this a must-watch -- it's how everyone involved comes together to illuminate more than could be gained from a traditional biographical series.
Mostly, though, Burns and Novick face the opposite challenge: an excess of material. The evidence of the eventfulness of that life -- its exteriority -- is extensive, to say the least. Meeting that challenge, they demonstrate a fine eye for detail.
It doesn't avoid or excuse Hemingway's excesses and betrayals and failures. Instead it enhances our understanding of the man by probing deeply into both his life and his writings.
In an appalling act of journalistic malpractice, the Burns and Novick series never even mentions the FBI file.
The documentary paints a tragic figure of an author whose work remains powerful, and whose complexities remain impossible to parse out.
He was an object of fascination like no other writer, and he receives his due in the superb new documentary Hemingway, a three-part, six-hour film for PBS directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, with a penetrating script by Geoffrey C. Ward.
The creators conscientiously attempt to examine Hemingway's art and personality in their contradictoriness.
... a masterful and loving work that, through incredible detail, covers the breadth of one of the greatest American authors
Burns & Novick's documentary more solidly cements Hemingway's flaws as his legacy, rather than his talent. He might have perpetuated the standard of American exceptionalism, but Hemingway's work is too much a product of its time.
Hemingway is the elevator-music version of Hemingway.
Burns and Novik keep things centered and do their best to tell Hemingway's story with often brutal honesty.
Audience Reviews for Hemingway: Season 1
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4d agoDocumentary does not mention Hemingway's work with the Russian precursor to KGB and, according to Humberto Fontova, Hemingway's delight at watching, with a drink in hand, the summary execution of Cubans at the hands of the Castro regime. Tell the whole truth Ken Burns.
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6d ago4.3 stars for now. So much to process before leaving a proper review.
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6d agoUsual PBS/Ken Burns whiny meandering, with the questionable presumption that there is all that much interest in the life of this pretentious literary gasbag. Lillian Ross did the job a lot better in the New Yorker in 1950.
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