I'm a retired English teacher, so I had an interest in watching this.
I thought it was well done. It's hard to believe Hemingway has been dead for 60 years.
Fifteen years ago I went back and read all his major novels (I have never read Across the River or the novels published after he died) and most of the short stories. Then I did it again five years ago. All of them hold up exceptionally well.
The two that were problematic for me were To Have and Have Not, which is just not especially good, and The Sun Also Rises. The latter is astonishingly "modern" in its style. (My specialty is 19th century American lit and I love Melville and Henry James; Hemingway's style is so different.) My complaint about it is that none of the characters are likeable. They live frivolous lives and I don't care about any of them.
I suppose For Whom the Bell Tolls is my favorite.
The Burns documentary did a good job of including people who defended Hemingway against charges of misogyny, which I appreciated. One of the commentators, Tobias Wolff (he wrote This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army in addition to numerous excellent short stories), is a fine writer and I recommend him if you like Hemingway.
Though the film was short on textual analysis and long on explorations of Hemingway's life, I did appreciate the honesty with which the writers approached Hemingway's leftist sympathies at the time of the Spanish Civil War. As the film says, he wrote straight propaganda in his journalistic depictions of the Loyalists. By contrast, his account of the Civil War in the actual novel (For Whom the Bell Tolls) is quite balanced. It is clear in the novel that the Spanish people have been betrayed by BOTH sides; the Loyalist side has been subverted by ruthless Stalinists just as much as the rebels are controlled by Hitler.
The last two hours were very hard to watch if you know anyone struggling with alcoholism and/or mental illness.
I enjoyed the film and recommend it.
