So,

I've just finished watching Hemingway and Gellhorn. In fact, I intend to wait, at least for one day, before writing the movie's review. However, it was in vain. I just can't get this movie out of my mind. It seems like words are craving to flow, as soon as possible, and they are yearning to be written, hence where I am now.

The movie is said to portraying one of the most beautiful romances of all times. Though I am in love with how it paints the relationship between these two talents, I cannot say that I'm totally agree with the statement. But indeed it's a beautiful romantic movie.

Gellhorn first met Hemingway in a saloon in Spain, where he was a famous writer, and she was an up-and-coming war correspondent. She was attractive, wise, talented, yet still inexperienced in covering the war subject. She was "one of the bravest women" that Hemingway had ever met, but not really a good writer: She wanted to write, but couldn't. In one way or another, Hemingway inspired her, and gave her what a writer really needed: "Just sit down before the typewriter and let it flow." Being by Hemingway's side had made Gellhorn what she truly was. She was mesmerized by him being so enthusiastic a writer, the man who was dead drunk at night and still able to wake up at the break of dawn and be there with his typewriter. They seduced and fell madly in love with each other.

However, the words of Pauline - Hemingway's ex-wife - seem to be a premonition that something bad is going to happen:

Hemingway filed a divorce with Pauline and married Gellhorn after that. Gellhorn then proved to everyone that she was more than just a mere woman who could only be a housewife, standing behind her husband's back all the time. At some points I can see Gellhorn outdid Hemingway. Her improvised speech received standing ovation - while Hemingway had difficulties in public speaking. And Hemingway didn't really like that. His ego was too big to handle this talented wife, He ended up stealing her job, not giving her a press pass, flirting another woman named Mary Welsh whose appearance seemed to resembled Gellhorn a lot and eventually, Gellhorn decided to give up on him. Between them there was a big, big wall. He wanted a woman who could take care of him (which later he said that woman was Mary), wait for him obediently at home, in bed, while Gellhorn was a woman so passionate about the world, the humanity that she "followed the war wherever I could reach it".

Yes, they were truly in love with each other, but this ego collision was too severe to forget,

"The poison that kills marriage is not jealousy. It's boredom." 

"We got along well during the wartime, but when there's no war, we created our own."

 

The last time they met was in the hospital, when Hemingway got in an accident with Mary. Seeing them so happy with each other made Gellhorn speak the words that she had always wanted to say, but denied to,

"I don't know what I'm doing here, really. I just...

I just want to say that I want a divorce."

Silence descended over the room immediately. Hemingway chased after Gellhorn, dragged his injured legs, trying to climb the stairs, slammed his head into the door of her room, screaming for a "second chance." But there was none for him. His behavior, his jealousy, his ego had proved that he was not the man, and she could not give him anymore chances.

"Go way, please, go!" crying Martha.

Later in her life, in an interview, Gellhorn stated that she had no intention of "being a footnote in someone else's life" when she was asked about her "debt to Hemingway." In the past, at that fated hospital, Hemingway did shout out loud that he created her, he made her how she was now.

Yes, I think that in one way or another, Hemingway influenced Gellhorn with his courageous, inspiring attitude, but not so greatly. It was her determination, her yearning for peace, for reaching out to human being's lives at the battlefield and understanding them, even though that sometimes caused her to "lose my faith in humanity," that made her one of the greatest war correspondents. That was a huge mistake of Hemingway, and to my belief, he did realize it after breaking up with his Marty.

One of the most memorable scenes of the movie is when Gellhorn sees a crow. The first time, if I remember correctly, was when Gellhorn was mesmerized by the talented Hemingway, when she was head over heels in love and bury her head into his wide, hairy chest. She saw the crow again when she grew old. I was wondering what she saw when she looked into the crow's eyes. Maybe she saw herself, a happy young woman who found a man that changed her life completely. Maybe she saw that man again, the one she loved, when he was a loving, responsible husband. Or maybe in those eyes, she saw the Spanish Civil War again, the horrible battlefield, the real bloodbath where thousands of patriotic people sacrificing their lives for their mother country and decided to pursue her dream, her life goal, once again putting everything behind her back and going to where only the horrid sounds of guns and the screaming for freedom of innocent people exist.