The Hemingway Night is a short film about the interplay of ego, friendship, and regret.  The plot is fairly simple, but the interactions are anything but.  Terry, a young man in his 20s, goes to visit his old friend Leon, an older guy still reeling from his recent divorce.  The two decide to have a few drinks before going for dinner, and turn to remembrances of times past, as such events often do.  Eventually Leon gets drunk enough to spill that he more or less blames Terry and one of Terry’s old friends for his divorce.  But Terry’s version of the story reveals just how little Leon understands himself or his ex-wife.

That’s the high-level summary, but I want to talk a little more about the details, plus a few other things.  So if there’s a chance that you’ll see this micro-budget indie short and you want to remain unspoiled about the details, please proceed with caution.  Otherwise, let me start with the admission that I consider both the director, Gary Mairs, and the screenwriter, Tom Block, to be great friends, the kind where you break out the high-dollar single-malt and shoot the shit until the wee hours on those rare occasions you get to spend time together.  So you can consider me utterly biased, especially if you’re the type who believes that a movie critic is a journalist and should be held to J-school standards.  I don’t, because criticism is about aesthetics, and no one alive can be objective about their own aesthetic sense.  I pledge to you now that not only am I never objective about movies, but I never will be, and what’s more, anyone who tells you different is fooling themselves.  That’s my personal caveat.  You still with me?

Anyway, although I’m definitely biased towards a movie made by friends, I’m happy to report that The Hemingway Night is the kind of movie made by friends that anyone would be happy to recommend.  A great short movie is like a great short story, capturing a complicated and perhaps ineffable emotion, providing a moment of catharsis, all without belaboring the character or plot necessary to sustain a feature-length film.  If only the movie distribution biz made it easier for short films to reach audiences.  I applaud the all-too-few mass media out there for short films, like The Believer’s offshoot video magazine Wholphin or the block of short films that IFC airs periodically.  But for the most part, the only opportunities for an audience are at film festivals.

So in The Hemingway Night, Terry (David Nordstrom), a character from Mairs’s last short film Say It, is clearly an intellectual with disdain for work that doesn’t meet his standards.  As soon as he sits down at Leon’s place (Leon is played by Jan Johnson), he picks up a book, Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley, with a questioning look.  “Don’t start,” Leon says.  In the course of their conversation, it becomes clear that Terry’s outlook was formed partially at the home of Leon and his ex Susie.  Terry was one of a group of younger friends who would come over to get drunk and high and talk about culture.  And Leon holds them all responsible for his wife losing respect for him, but especially Terry.  At the point of catharsis, we learn that Leon once mentioned that he liked A Moveable Feast, and the younger men mocked him mercilessly for that.  Afterwards, he says, his wife wouldn’t touch him and eventually left, his children in tow.  Terry, however, points out that Leon obviously thought of himself as a mentor to the younger guys, but he wasn’t fooling anybody, not even his wife.  On the night that Leon thought himself unmanned by the younger guys over the Hemingway book, Terry tells him that his ex brought all the younger guys into the kitchen to ask them to go easy on Leon.  “He tries so hard,” she told them.

This is fantastic stuff, the type of reversal that rips off a character’s ego like an old band-aid.  Leon is clearly devastated and more sour than ever, and Terry can’t understand.  Leon wanted to blame the younger guys, and he wanted to be able to forgive them because he saw himself as a guy with the wisdom and largesse to forgive youth for being young.  But Terry’s story reveals that Leon’s wife didn’t even consider him the intellectual equal of the younger men.  There’s no one to blame but himself.  Terry doesn’t understand why this revelation is more sour to Leon, because Terry is at least capable of blaming himself for his own mistakes.  But Leon has built his whole identity, the narrative that allows him to sleep at night, around this lie.

Terry leaves, promising to return although Leon makes it clear that he doesn’t want to see Terry again.  As Terry sits in his car, he watches a father take his tired daughter out of a car and carry her inside.  It’s a wonderfully enigmatic ending.  Terry could be thinking about Leon’s torn family or the fragility of love or just marveling at the excellent parking spot they found, but I think he’s considering the role that fathers play.  Despite how the two men see themselves, Leon is definitely a father figure to Terry, and Terry played no small role in tearing Leon down.  It may be necessary to kill any Buddhas you happen to meet on the road, even Buddhas that aren’t so wise, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to live with yourself afterwards.

That’s a heavy dose of wisdom for 19 minutes.  And that’s how the best short stories work.