If streaming the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick Hemingway documentary on PBS just isn't your thing, and you want some physical media you can hold in your hand, you're in luck. The Hemingway documentary will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD on May 4.
PBS lists the retail price at $49.99 for the Blu-Ray disc, and $39.99 for DVD. But we're already seeing retails such as Amazon list the discs for less.
The 360-minute documentary is broken up over three parts. Conveniently, each part has its own disc. So that's two hours per part, and two hours per disc, for six hours total.
If you've yet to watch the documentary, it truly is a fantastic work. Here's the full gist, from PBS:
Narrated by long-time collaborator Peter Coyote, the series features an all-star cast of actors bringing Hemingway (voiced by Jeff Daniels), his friends, and family, vividly to life. Through letters to and from his four wives — voiced by Meryl Streep, Keri Russell, Mary-Louise Parker and Patricia Clarkson — the film reveals Hemingway at his most romantic and his most vulnerable, grappling at times with insecurity, anxiety, and existential loneliness. Burns and Novick paint a picture of Hemingway, who captured on paper the complexities of the human condition in profound prose, and whose work remains deeply influential around the world. Informed by interviews with celebrated writers, scholars, and Hemingway’s son, Patrick, the filmmakers explore the painstaking process through which Hemingway created some of the most notable works of fiction, in novels such as, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea; short stories “Hills Like White Elephants,” “The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “Up in Michigan,” “Indian Camp” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro;” as well as the nonfiction works Death in the Afternoon and A Moveable Feast.
The Hemingway documentary also remains available on Amazon Prime Video an on iTunes.
Also coming to DVD from PBS in May are Masterpiece: Atlantic Crossing ($45, May 4),, NOVA: Looking for Life on Mars ($25, May 4) Masterpiece: Triple Feature with Mrs. Wilson/Flesh & Blood/The Chaperone ($50, May 4), and Dolly Parton: 50 Years at the Opry ($25, May 11).
