Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s three-part, six-hour documentary series, “Hemingway,’ examines the visionary work and turbulent life of one of the greatest and most influential American writers – Ernest Hemingway.

It does indeed, and as usual, Burns delivers a six-hour entertaining and splendid re-hash of the great writer’s life and career.

Burns’ piece, narrated by Peter Coyote and Hemingway, by the voice of actor Jeff Daniels, adds some never-before-background, and most disturbingly, certain things personal data, I’ve read before, prior to growing older, more liberal.

“Ernest Hemingway, a man of words and guns who lived and died by the bullet, took pleasure in killing animals. He included various now protected buffalo, cheetah, eagle,,hyena, impala, jackal, lion, sheep, warthog and zebra.”

In Burns’ piece, he shows Hemingway posing proudly with slain, now protected animals on a page in Hemingway’s African diary, with pictures as we’ve seen posted by the Trump brothers with their “Trophies.”

The voiceover continues, “As a lifelong destroyer of unknowing, unarmed and unlucky animals, Hemingway apparently believed he had a mission to explain why he is among “those men who enjoy killing.”

Burns’ film is a truly revealing film, warts and all, as they say, and is often horrifyingly described and expertly done, with more dark truths about the “Papa” I once admired.

“Hemingway” streams on PBS.

 

J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.

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