Hemingway vs. Callaghan

Good but not as good as it might have been. The scenes in the Toronto Star newsroom are overwrought. Gordon Pinsent is a wonderfully capable actor but he doesn't remotely resemble the mature Morley Callaghan. And the constant flashbacks create a sometimes disturbing choppiness. Having said that, it's a decent exposition of an interesting piece of Canadian lore. The recreation of Paris in the twenties is very effective And the performances, for the most part, are good. But overall the film tried too hard and in doing so didn't meet its expectations or mine. Rather than basing the film on Callahan's book, it would have been better to use William Burrill's "Hemingway The Toronto Years." But it's still worth watching and CBC deserves credit for taking on this project.

When a person you know dies the world seems to go on. That's the way it is. The world always goes on. When you walk in another man's shoes and view his thoughts. It is a different story. What was it like to know Ernest Hemingway. Why do writers of our age pale in comparison. The writers in todays bookstores will never be studied by a university crowd. Contempory writers are designated for the present environment. Not for beyond it's milieu. Seeing Gordan Pinsent walk around see ghosts was overwhelming. Everywhere he looked he saw a ghost. It is incredible how a fertile imagination and contemplation come alive on the screen. We see Hemingway full of life, taking on the world, creating a legend of himself. We see how everything he ever does he writes about and magnifies with his fame. People believe his stories and Hemingway gets caught up. At the end fame abandons him and disposes him like so many it does in this day and age. Would a consumer culture dispose of Shakespeare. Would a legendary tough newspaper editor fire a person like William Shakespeare for literary incompetence. This CBC movie does an honest portrayal of how a writer is treated in Canada. Arts is not valued in Canada. It is typical to see a literary giant to be first disposed by his contemporaries by a degenerate. The dismissal of Ernest Hemingway from the Toronto Star for literary incompetance is the epiphany of the Canadian Arts community. It is great to see an artist in the Canada, but when we see what they go through to make it, you know why they cock a gun to their head. First the arts community send a bad message, then the artist in desperate straights believes them. A very hard time watching the last few minutes of the movie. The movie equivilant is Ed Wood. Artist going up against degenrates. That what this movie ends up being. Raging against the machine.

I'm not one to write my comments but my friend worked on this film and he said it was bad. I had no idea how bad this is garbage. What is it with canadian tv? All the acting was stiff and monotone. The script was horrible and directing was primative at best. boring and shallow with an annoying and bland feeling of importance. It really really sucked...you guys need to get it together, you need entertaining shows if you want to compete with us americans. H vs. C was garbage Aaaargh! so bad!