IN LOVE AND WAR
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(New Line) Starring: Sandra Bullock, Chris O'Donnell, Mackenzie Astin, Emilio Bonucci. Screenplay: Allan Scott & Clancy Sigal and Anna Hamilton Phelan, based on "Hemingway in Love and War" by Henry S. Villard and James Nagel. Producers: Dmitri Villard, Richard Attenborough. Director: Richard Attenborough. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (violence, adult situations) Running Time: 110 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
IN LOVE AND WAR, a thoroughly mediocre attempt at an intimate epic, suffers the added disadvantage of extraordinarily bad timing. There has already been a better film in the last couple of months about a tragic war-time romance involving a wounded man and his care-taker (THE ENGLISH PATIENT); there has already been a better film in the last couple of weeks about the ill-fated real-life true love of a suicidal author (THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD). That is not to say that IN LOVE AND WAR would have been a better film if it had been released a year ago. It does mean, however, that the points of comparison between this film and its two predecessors make its weaknesses all the more evident.
The setting is 1918 Italy, where morale is low in the wake of a German/Austrian onslaught in the final months of World War I but American troops are unable to assist due to commitment in France. Instead, the U.S. sends assistance to hospitals in the form of Red Cross nurses, among them 26-year-old Agnes von Kurowsky (Sandra Bullock). One of Agnes' patients is a gung-ho teenager from Kansas City named Ernest Hemingway (Chris O'Donnell), eager to see action despite a vision impairment which has rendered him unfit for front line duty. His journalistic trip to the Italian trenches earns Ernie a severe leg wound, but he heals under Agnes' care. The cocky young Ernie falls for his nurse, and is convinced that she loves him too in spite of competition from an Italian doctor (Emilio Bonucci) and Ernie's own friend Harry Villard (Mackenzie Astin). Even when they seem to be coming together, Agnes and Ernie find the war separating them, leading to a difficult choice for Agnes.
The first image in IN LOVE AND WAR is a weathered hand-drawn map, but it might as well be a big neon sign announcing that director Richard Attenborough (GANDHI, CHAPLIN) is now about to bring you an Epic with a capital "E." And he never lets you forget it for a moment, either, trotting out spectacular locations, battlefield footage and a grandiose score by George Fenton. Unfortunately, the locations are shot flatly by Roger Pratt, a couple of the battlefield scenes are dropped in like sympathy-seeking mortars without a moment of set-up, and Fenton's score is as loud and relentless as any theater's sub-woofers could withstand. Attenborough seems so concerned with making IN LOVE AND WAR sweeping that he ends up sweeping his characters into the background.
Sweeping characters like this aside doesn't take a particular strong broom, as it turns out. After failing to provide the grandeur of THE ENGLISH PATIENT, IN LOVE AND WAR then can't muster the kind of convincing characterizations which at least made THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD watchable. Sandra Bullock is capable of making Agnes somewhat appealing, and of lending a modicum of plausibility to the script's portrayal of her as the most fought-over female creature since Helen of Troy. Bullock pulls out every All-American girl stop, and her kindly nurse could easily win over frightened patient and stoic doctor alike. As for Chris O'Donnell...well, don't you just want to pat him on the head and send him to bed with a glass of milk? It is one thing that O'Donnell is trying to play Hemingway with a youthful naivete; it is another to be playing an Ernest so earnest that he comes off like the guy who would get wedgies in grade school. The age difference between Agnes and Ernie becomes the focus of the rift between them, but it plays out even ickier than writers Allan Scott, Clancy Sigal and Anna Hamilton Phelan intend. You half expect "Mrs. Robinson" to start playing on the soundtrack.
O'Donnell is even worse trying to play the disillusioned sot Hemingway becomes, when his raging outbursts seem more like petulant hissy fits, but by that point no one in the audience will care much about him anyway. As an indication of how inconsequential the central romance between Agnes and Ernie is, IN LOVE AND WAR actually gains momentum during the half an hour of screen time when the focus turns to Agnes' relationship with Dr. Caraciolo. The Venice locations create a glowing romantic setting, and Bonucci turns in a nice performance as the stiffly chivalric suitor. Agnes and Caraciolo seem perfect for each other, and Agnes' decision to turn him down makes sense only if we buy that the lusty Ernie, whose mere touch of her stocking reduces her to incoherence, is the passionate man of her dreams. O'Donnell's Ernie is about as lusty as cub reporter Jimmy Olsen, and IN LOVE AND WAR is reduced to its familiarity -- an epic drama with no drama, and a personal story with no personality.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 bores to end all bores: 4.
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