I am a Hemmingway fan. I like Sandra Bullock, was very impressed with the cinematography. Production values are very high. Attenborough is a load of Emperor's clothes. I was interested to watch this film but it was --so--very--slow. Like many films and television programmes it seems to be made on the economic film principle, where, having got the cast and crew to a location/set the l-o-n-g-e-r the screen time that can be dragged out there, the cheaper the 'per minute' cost of the whole film. Whereas a single shot used to average about 3 seconds we now get 3 seconds establishing the characters in a place, a slow two shot sequence of slow moody conversation with pregnant pauses (nine months!?) and eventually one character leaves while the other pulls faces to the music, sometimes for as long as another 11 seconds.Having established the hospital we do not need to keep seeing it or people walking about it without advancing the plot.
The ironic thing with this film is that Hemmingway wrote like John Ford directed. Ford started the camera and the actor on the mark and put his fist over the lens as he shouted 'cut'. One take and no way for the studio to drag out the editing. Casablanca takes place 90% in a café'e, slow? No. Curtiz did not need 600 horses to get pace.
The ironic thing with this film is that Hemmingway wrote like John Ford directed. Ford started the camera and the actor on the mark and put his fist over the lens as he shouted 'cut'. One take and no way for the studio to drag out the editing. Casablanca takes place 90% in a café'e, slow? No. Curtiz did not need 600 horses to get pace.