FilmLit: Papa - Hemingway in Cuba (2016)

Film Review: Papa - Hemingway in Cuba is a slice of Hemingway's life, a short period in the late Fifties when he became friends with an idol-worshiping reporter from Miami. Perhaps the best element of the film is that it was filmed on location, in Hemingway's actual haunts in Cuba, including his own luxurious house (carefully preserved by the Cuban government). Apart from that we see what the reporter saw: marital problems between two people with big egos, one just a bit larger than the other; Hemingway's sympathies for the communist rebels, reminiscent of his involvement in the Spanish Civil War; the toll that abuse and age had taken on the writer -- now a writer who could no longer write. In one heartbreaking scene, we see Hemingway broken as he painfully etches a zero for his daily writing word count, this by a man who had once proudly crowed about how many words, good words, he could write in a day. We also see how his paranoia was not all that paranoid, and the pressures that were pushing him to his end in Idaho. Although not a great film (destroyed on Rotten Tomatoes), Papa - Hemingway in Cuba is a good solid effort by all concerned, guilty only of trying to do too much in too little time, trying to make too many points about the author too quickly. The movie can't show Hemingway's greatness as a writer, especially as Hemingway's reputation may now be at the lowest point it's ever been (perhaps due for rehabilitation from his image as the great white macho man). The more the viewer knows about Hemingway, however, the more enjoyment there is to be found. Papa - Hemingway in Cuba is a rare and interesting glance into a life, well worth the time of anyone interested in the Nobel Prize-winning author.  🐢