Across the River and Into the Trees (2024) Review

the story: An old soldier tries to find a reason to live.

the rating: ****

the review: I've become somewhat of a Hemingway nut, in the past decade, stemming, ironically or not, from a depiction of Hemingway himself, in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, and have been steadily plugging away at his fiction (and some of his nonfiction, including, of course, A Moveable Feast), and he's become very easily one of my favorite writers as a result.  Across the River and Into the Trees, though, first came to my attention as a home video release (since its theatrical run was negligible), as it's not considered one of Heminway's essential works, and as such hadn't previously showed up on my radar.

So I collected the movie and ordered a copy of the book, and watched the movie and then read the book, and having read the book, rewatched the movie.  As these things tend to go, for those who aren't slavishly devoted to the narrative that "the book is better," I drew more from the movie the second time around, as a result.  

The movie changes things somewhat considerably, but it's the same story, all the same, and anyway, it's really a very fine excuse to spend some time with Liev Schreiber.

Schreiber has been one of my favorite actors since I first saw him, either in Scream or RKO 281, in which he plays Orson Welles as he constructs Citizen Kane, although it was probably another TV movie, one I'm fairly certain I'm in exclusive circles for remembering, much less very fondly, at all, called Since You've Been Gone, just an absolutely great, classic voice, and the knowledge of how to use it.  He's otherwise had a fairly obscure career, most notable as the second actor to play Sabretooth, in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  

In some alternate version of history Schreiber is an acknowledged classic Hollywood lead actor with a rich catalog everyone knows.  

In this one?  You could do far worse than to appreciate him in Across the River and Into the Trees.  Which, by the way, is popularly considered one of Hemingway's worst efforts, but I enjoyed it as much as I have any Heminway, and as I've said, the film version is worth watching on its own merits, chief among them being perhaps the long-awaited true spotlight for Liev Schreiber.

They say Bogart wasn't really Bogart until he hit middle age, when he at last became a valuable commodity.  I don't see that being Schreiber's fate.  Today's Hollywood is far too finical for such things.  But that he found such a role, in such a film, is worth celebrating all the same.  The whole performance seems natural, a culmination of everything he's done so well before, everything he was always meant to be, but never quite found in other movies.  

I'm the kind of film fan who can appreciate a movie even if all that's worth recommending is the lead actor.  I can accept a good performance for its own regard.  Fortunately, the movie around Schreiber knows what it's doing, too, and although it's not Hemingway's version, it feels like classic Hollywood in ways that haven't been seen in probably half a century, an international setting (Venice) that's allowed to settle into the backdrop, as Schreiber embarks on his last fateful excursion, with a young lady who finds herself caught up in it, despite every reason not to be.  

Josh Hutcherson, playing a very different role than in a much wider release in 2024, The Beekeeper, is probably the chief beneficiary of the alterations Peter Flannery made to the story, in an expanded, wiser supporting turn than Hemingway envisioned.