★ 1 / 10
The Words obliquely poses the question, what would
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The Words obliquely poses the question, what would have happened if someone had found the suitcase full of Papa Hem’s manuscripts that Hadley lost at the Gare…
The Words obliquely poses the question, what would have happened if someone had found the suitcase full of Papa Hem’s manuscripts that Hadley lost at the Gare de Lyon, and published the con-tent as his own work?
Unfortunately, the answer is: not much. The problem, or one of them, is that the movie establishes too long a period of time between the loss of the manuscript — shortly after the end of WWI — and its publishing — presumably, the then-present day.
As we all know, Hemingway eventually got over the incident and went on to become arguably the greatest author of the 20th century, essentially rendering the film’s premise moot.
Co-directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal’s script, however, conveniently has its homologous character, played by Ben Barnes as a Young Man and Jeremy Irons as an old nurseryman, give up writing forever following his soon-to-be ex-wife’s misplacement of his text.
Needless to say, this is the least hemingwayesque thing to have done. Here’s another couple of problems. Wannabe writer Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper) finds the briefcase in an antiques store in Paris, and buys it; lo and behold, not only is the manuscript still inside, un-touched — from the Gare de Lyon in the 1920s to an antiques shop in the 2010s, the briefcase sure-ly must have exchanged hands often (now, there’s you film), and yet it didn’t occur to anyone to rifle through it on the odd chance that it might contain something of value —, but Rory actually leaves it untouched ("He retyped every word as it was written on those pages. He didn't change a pe-riod, a comma, or even correct the spelling mistakes"), which doesn’t stop from going directly to the printing press.
It’s at this point that one yearns for a movie like Genius, about famed editor Max Perkins — who worked with the likes of Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and Hem himself; even an Ernest Hemingway at the peak of his powers wouldn’t crap out a best-seller just like that, and it certainly wouldn’t hit bookstore shelves without undergoing extensive rewrites and editing work.
But I digress. The Old Man (who, again, lacks the testicular fortitude of both Papa and the character to which his moniker is a reference) recognizes his work and confronts Rory — but don’t expect anything along the lines of Secret Window; the Old Man "just thought [Rory] should know the story behind these stories in case anyone was to ask."
This comes right after the Old Man admits "I don't know how you did it. To be brutally honest, I don't care." But if he doesn’t care, and he clearly ne-ver did, why should we? Why even bother?
The whole thing becomes even less urgen when we consider that the Old Man’s tale is only a story within Rory’s story, which in turn is a story within another story: the latest book by novelist Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid), who is discussing it with literary groupie Daniella (Olivia Wilde). Enough to make you wonder if there’s a point to any of this drivel, and if so, what the hell it is.
PS. That Rory’s adventure is a fictional yarn — which might be based on events in Hammond’s life, and then again it might not — could explain that he and the Old Man live in a world where Hemingway existed (a copy of The Sun Also Rises makes a cameo, being read by the Young Man), but neither ever stops to consider for the briefest moment that their little mix-up is eerily similar to one of the best known anecdotes in Western literature.
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★ 10 / 10
The wife who lost the manuscript
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This powerful and emotional film appears to be inspired by the terrible true story of what happened to Ernest Hemingway in 1922, and which contributed to the…
This powerful and emotional film appears to be inspired by the terrible true story of what happened to Ernest Hemingway in 1922, and which contributed to the breakup of his first marriage and, some might say, the wreckage of his later life and his eventual suicide. I feel the tragedy of Hemingway's suicide particularly acutely because I received one of the last letters he ever sent. I wrote to him as a teenager when he was in the Mayo Clinic (because I was able to find its address and this had been announced in the newspapers), and he wrote back to me. The letter was dictated to a nurse, who wrote the text by hand, but Hemingway added his unmistakable, bold and florid signature at the bottom. His letter was extremely courteous and generous, but it contained the haunting phrase: 'When I leave here tomorrow
' His treatment for depression had been unsuccessful, and it was not long before he ended his personal torment with his hunting rifle. What can have caused this? His father had killed himself, and at least one other family member had done so also. But the roots of everything seem to me to go back to 1922. He and his first wife Hadley were living happily, if in extreme poverty (eating pigeons which he caught in the park), in Paris, and 'Hem' had published very little. He had finished his first novel and several stories. They had a chance to have a break at Lausanne in Switzerland, and Hadley was to join Hem there. Without telling him, she gathered up all of his unpublished material including his novel and put it in a small suitcase to take with her, thinking he might want to work on it in Switzerland. She cannot have been very bright, because she took (1) the original handwritten manuscripts, (2) the typed copies, and (3) the carbon copies of everything, leaving nothing behind. She then lost the suitcase on the train. This story is recounted in Hemingway's posthumous memoir A MOVEABLE FEAST, which he did not dare to publish in his lifetime, presumably because he did not wish to upset his son by Hadley. Hem thus lost his first novel and all his unpublished stories. The destruction of all of his work, and the shattering realization of how stupid his wife really was, sowed the seeds of the dissolution of all he held dear. Of course there were other factors, the strange sexual dynamics described in the posthumous novel THE GARDEN OF EDEN, and the man-eater Pauline Pfeiffer who made sure she became the second Mrs. Hemingway after being Hadley's 'best friend'. I often walk past the house where Hem and Pauline had their flat in the Rue Ferou in Paris (long before Man Ray lived in the same small street). But it was leaving the novel on the train that ruined everything, in my opinion, and it was not until 1926 that Hem managed to publish his ostensibly 'first' novel, THE SUN ALSO RISES, which caused such a sensation and made him famous. There is little doubt in my mind that this is what the producers and authors of THE WORDS have used as the inspiration of their own tale, which concerns the loss of the manuscript of a novel by a wife on a train from Paris, with all the terrible consequences which result, including the destruction of the marriage. Just in case we all need reminding, the film has several scenes where the first edition of THE SUN ALSO RISES (in impeccably accurate dust jacket) is reverently handled by the young American author of the lost novel, and he and his young wife also live in Paris in great poverty. The other married couple central to the story, living in the present, also visit one of Hemingway's Paris residences to pay tribute to him. (In fact it is not one of the real ones, as I am familiar with all those. The plaque to Hemingway in the film may also be made specially for the film. But the idea is sound.) For the first portion of this film, the theme appears to be literary plagiarism. It is only later that the true theme becomes dominant and apparent, namely the lost manuscript left by the wife on the train. This is because the action takes place in 'the past' (the author of the novel and his wife in Paris) and in 'the present', where another aspiring author finds the lost novel in a briefcase which his wife has bought for him in a brocante shop on a visit to Paris, and publishes it as his own work. Alas, the subject of 'alleged plagiarism' (I have to be careful of my words) is all too painful to me as well, since one of my closest friends is Michael Baigent, who unsuccessfully sued Dan Brown concerning THE DA VINCI CODE, though I tried to persuade him not to, and seeing the financial ruin this brought upon him has been intensely distressing. This film mingles both themes in an extremely dramatic and upsetting double-tale where tragedy lurks around every corner, and all suffer. All the performances, the direction and script by the pair Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, the cinematography and the mood are all exquisitely sensitive and thoughtful. Jeremy Irons is marvellously convincing as an old man, Dennis Quaid is gut-wrenching as a man haunted by his regrets, Brad Coooper, Olivia Wilde, Zoe Saldana, and the beautiful Nora Arnezeder are all superb as the main players in this film, which will be difficult for anyone who sees it ever to forget. The film is a modern classic, with a lingering aftertaste of melancholy, and important messages for all who value words. Ultimately, the tragedy expressed by the old man is that he cared more about the words than about the wife who lost them, and by doing so, he lost both.
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Great movie. Really makes you wonder, if other writers followed suit and took credit for something they didn't create themselves...