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 Without telling him, she gathered up all of his unpublished material including his novel and put it in a small suitcase to take with her, thinking he might want to work on it in Switzerland.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 Hem thus lost his first novel and all his unpublished stories.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.
Review of The Words
