I usually love everything Ken Burns does so I eagerly watched his 3-part documentary (with Lynn Novick) on Ernest Hemingway, which I assume was made because we are coming close to the 60th anniversary of his suicide on July 2, 1961. Or maybe it was made because Hemingway remains a literary giant. I liked the documentary enough, especially the beginning (Paris, Spain, Martha Gellhorn) and the very end, when he struggles with alcoholism and a long descent into night. I wished there had been a little more about his writing and why it was so novel.
My main reservation about the movie was that I felt Burns/Novick pushed the concussion angle too much to explain Hemingway's deterioration. Unless someone kept a bit of Hemingway's brain somewhere to run tests, it seems really speculative to pin the blame on his psychosis and depression on a series of concussions. The man drank heavily for decades. That to me is much more likely to be the primary reason of his mental troubles. The pictures make him look far older than his 61 years - maybe closer to 71, frankly. Nonetheless, it was an interesting movie about a larger-than-life personality.
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