In latest film, Walpole's Ken Burns examines literary icon Ernest Hemingway

Mar. 24—It may seem ironic that famed filmmaker and Walpole resident Ken Burns made Ernest Hemingway, the American writer known for brevity, the subject of his latest exhaustive documentary.

But Burns said close examination is warranted. In fact, he hears profound musings — on life, on love, on human nature — in Hemingway's simple prose.

"What's left out speaks volumes," he said. "There's so much more depth."

Burns and co-director Lynn Novick explore that depth in a three-part film series, which premieres April 5 on PBS. They trace Hemingway's life from his youth in Illinois to his time as an ambulance driver in World War I and through his literary career, first as a journalist and later a short-story writer and novelist.

Burns, whose documentaries on the Civil War, baseball, jazz and more have earned 15 Emmy Award nominations, and Novick started filming the project in 2014 after having discussed Hemingway as a possible subject for decades, they said. Hemingway, a Pulitzer Prize winner, drew their interest because, in probing his own flaws, he addresses questions of human nature, according to Burns.

"He is arguably one of the great, if not the greatest, American writer of the 20th century," Burns said. "That's certainly open to debate, and we're not saying that's what it is. We just find ... this interest in pursuing these deep dives into people who are super complicated."

Their film finds Hemingway in constant motion: geographically — in Europe for both world wars and many of the intervening years, as well as Florida and Cuba — and romantically, struggling to sustain his marriages. It explores how those experiences influenced his work, which includes celebrated titles like "A Farewell to Arms," "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "The Old Man and the Sea."

The documentary also details the cultural influences behind Hemingway's illustrious career, like his time in Parisian literary circles with the writers Gertrude Stein and James Joyce, as well as his passion for sailing in the Caribbean.

And it explores the various traumas that Hemingway faced at a young age, which included struggling to earn his mother's love as a child, seeing the horrors of war at 18 and dealing with his father's suicide a decade later. The rejection of a woman whom Hemingway loved, as well as his family's history of mental illness, may have also fueled the discontent that shattered his first three marriages, according to Burns.

The filmmaker said it was important to show that while Hemingway's restlessness drove his literary greatness, it also weighed heavily on those around him, including his children. (He and Novick interviewed Patrick Hemingway, one of the writer's three sons, for the film.)

"There are people [in Hemingway's life] who suffer from a lot of that, so it can't be taken in the abstract, where a writer needs to go out and experience the world," Burns said. "We tried to account for that and own that, or at least have him own it."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his own brushes with death, much of Hemingway's writing deals with mortality.

Novick said she found the writer's honesty in confronting death as a natural reality "extremely vivifying and refreshing." Burns concurred, calling Hemingway — who died by suicide in 1961 — a tragic figure and hailing his ability to explore the subject publicly.

"The great gift of him is his willingness to face the question of our own mortality with such courage and do it in so many different ways: in nature, in war, in relationship, in how people function," Burns said. "It's a great gift, and it will be enduring."

Death was also a backdrop for the filmmakers' own work, with the world battling a pandemic that has killed more than half a million Americans alone.

Filming for the documentary was largely complete by March 2020, according to Novick, who said the staff did its last in-person shoot a month earlier at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, which has a large collection of Hemingway's writings. She explained, however, that they had not yet finished recording voiceovers for the film at the time. (Actor Jeff Daniels reads for Hemingway, and actresses Meryl Streep, Keri Russell, Mary-Louise Parker and Patricia Clarkson voice the writer's wives.)

Work on the film continued remotely, with Burns at his home in Walpole. Novick said collaborating remotely was difficult, since staff members were used to working together in an office.

She added, though, that the pandemic helped them understand Hemingway, who was hospitalized with war-related injuries during the 1918 influenza pandemic, commonly known as the Spanish flu.

"Living through this, I think it gives us a little bit more perspective on his sense of mortality and the fragility of life," Novick said. "... That's what we've all kind of had to learn in a way."

Burns said that while Hemingway's work addresses universal themes, his descriptions of nature may resonate particularly well with Monadnock Region residents.

"I think if you've ever walked outside your house and said, 'I live in a beautiful place. How do I find the words to describe what I just saw?', you can read Ernest Hemingway and find someone who was equally besotted with the power of nature," he said.

As for whether he and Novick considered adding any short, declarative sentences to the film's script as an homage to Hemingway, Burns said they left that style to their subject.

"This is the most parodied writer of all time," he said. "Somebody can start writing a parody of Ernest Hemingway, and you know instantaneously that they're trying to be Hemingway. I think we're smart enough to know we're not going there."

Caleb Symons can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1420, or csymons@keenesentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter @CalebSymonsKS.