Ulysses' Gaze (1995)

Thanks for the memories!

hyped garbage

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Ulysses' Haze : There isn't one way to make movies. All the artists are wholly free to choose (and responsible to) the style of making what they want. But the viewers also are free to choose. Whatever the movie was, wherever it came from, whoever made it, there is certain feeling, idea, power that CAN affect you, or not ! Although nothing and no one is the same, but ironically, it is great fact that your own feelings for one movie or artist are the same of somebody out there. So, on the basis of that, let me see what's so hateful about this movie so its style.Ulysses' Maze : By all means, it's different. But even if, in its kind of difference.. It's so awful. What kind of movie, any movie, that alienates its viewers ? Ulysses' Gaze is so dead. It is one unforgettable invitation to watch death and live it ! Maybe that's exactly what was the tremendous genius Theo Angelopoulos thinking of ?!First off, it's beyond boring. The heavy thick pace will definitely distract you so powerfully. Oh yes, it's slow to give you the chance to contemplate, but certainly it managed to sleep you, since either there isn't much to think and contemplate about. Even your poor try to stand it, would lose. I lost the last strength of patience while the long very damn long sequence of Lenin's statue. OH MY GOD, that was too hard to follow. It compelled me to disbelieve anything this apoplexy says. Once the interaction is gone, the whole deal is finished. I found myself literally out of it, well.. It pushes you to that ! Not to mention the theatrical style (UGH !) how can I bear someone who's working at "film" to turn it into "theater" ?!, or to make the whole screen as white smoke, (I love radio but not like that !). It's not renewal inasmuch as incapacity...Or Harvey Keitel as the lead ?? Did you see him talking to the girl when she was running next to the moving train?, did you see him laughing when he found the movie?, did you see him at the end scene? : Great comedy !. His face was stony, and his charisma didn't impassion. De Niro was smart enough to reject the role. Basically how to say anything through that dumb excuse for a script? Detached-fantasy-journeys into one's life could tell about nation's history but not in this transcendent, indigent and cold way.Surely the attempt to narrate differently was promising but the absurd plot could've been more dexterous, enjoyable, and less dull. Many sequences were full of braggart stupidity masquerading as sublime art (the black umbrellas' scene for one instance!). If you think of it as poetry, then it's the most adolescent, silly, and alleged cinematic poetry I've ever seen.It takes a super fairness to admit that I liked the music, the cinematography. Though all the rest (the acting, the editing,..etc) was barrenly tasteless in a way that didn't give you chance not to endure it for a second watching, but to endure it for a first one ! What bothered me the most, other than being in front of it for foul full 176 min, that the one and only (Theo Angelopoulos) was so angry (and confused !) when this film lost Cannes Film Festival's main award !! That got on my nerve crazily ! Ulysses' Laze : Well, any artiest must look at his work to know where he was wrong. But Mr. Angelopoulos will never do such a thing. He's a god, an idol for himself. So he can never be wrong ! And all of his blind lovers can't (or don't dare to) find anything may be slightly wrong with his work. He's the great yet the greatest. I challenge any enamored of Mr. Angelopoulos to tell me what possibly could be not good about this movie. Actually the ultimate replay would be : nothing ! There is nothing like it so naturally it's wonderful ! Whilst there is nothing like the plague, though it's not wonderful ! Ulysses' Daze : So, Mr. A (could refer to "ailing" more than "Anglo" !) was searching for the first movie ever shot in the Balkans as the originality /the creative essence that has been destroying to lose everything because the foolishness of the modern human which led to war/ the final absolute madness that ended everything and everyone. And all the intellectual's efforts will lastly make nothing. WAW, the only problem is that it had been made by originality that was effectively destructive for its movie (as well as us !) to lose everything it says or shows ! They're so simple words yet in the smallest letters ever, that is strenuous and unfruitful in the same bad time. Like a strong nightmare it worked not for the sake of it, but for making me refuse to watch it (read: stand it) ever again ! Great achievement for a movie that is !Ulysses Razes : (Angelo-mad-about-himself-poulos) as the maker of it is the only one who sees its joy, the only one who feels its trueness, the only one who finds it the greatest film ever made, and doesn't believe that anybody may feel anything but that. It exemplifies what kind of distending ego that we have here ? Mr. Theo, I'm sorry to say it but...The pleasure was all yours.Ulysses' Ease : Is it a spectacular classic for someone out there? Clearly not for me. I hated it, hate it, and I'll hate it as a typical example for a work that was murdered by its maker's hopeless megalomania.It's not a tableau about the human's havoc; it's one about a film's havoc.

Truly a masterpiece, perhaps the best film of the 90s. Angelopoulos made an incredibly beautiful, poetic and deep film. When you consider its title, many people pay too much attention to the word "Ulysses", when "Gaze" is probably more important. This film is about the loss of innocence. The main character, "A", searches for the Mannakis films. Pioneer filmmakers in the region, "A" wants to recover their innocent sight, that first sight of the early days in cinema. That search takes him on a journey around the Balkans, during the war. Angelopoulos wants to show us that, just as we have lost our innocent gaze towards films, there's no possible innocent gaze in a war, no objective approach. There's too much history behind, too much baggage, too much hate. There are no good or bad sides; everybody kills each other. That's why the final showing of the Mannakis tapes is so touching. Finally, a clean sight, an innocent gaze.

One of the most beautiful, poetic films ever made. The opening scenes are pure, unbeatable art. Rather than the unwinding of the complex narrative itself, it is the visual power of the images that Angelopoulos offers us that make this work so disturbing and beautiful. You have to watch the film as a series of paintings, poems, installations and performances rather than a conventional movie. The acting is superb, especially Harvey Keitel's performance, one of the best that this great actor has ever delivered. Especially memorable is the scene in which an old woman is taken for a ride to her hometown in Macedonia by Keitel. The woman left Macedonia before the advent of Communism and is now returning to her country for the first time in decades. Since her absence, her place has been transformed in a nightmarish communist city, filled with gray, impersonal, concrete buildings. We see the woman helpless and bewildered in an environment that she no longer recognizes, while Keitel goes away. A powerful metaphor of the fast and tremendous transformations suffered by the Balkans during the 20th century. This is above all a lesson in history. A poignant monument to the memory and fate of Europe.

As a citizen of Sarajevo who has spent all four years under the siege of the city in nineties in Sarajevo, I can confirm that nobody has been killed on the streets of Sarajevo because he or she was of Serb nationality. I can say that during the war in Bosnia, streets of Sarajevo were safer place than they are today. To throw bodies into the river flowing through Sarajevo is also nonsense. After the Serbian family has been killed on the street, the Muslim soldier in the movie says "Throw bodies into Miljacka!" and it has been translated as "Throw them into the river!", because an average movie viewer cannot know the name of the river flowing through Sarajevo. Whoever visited Sarajevo knows that Miljacka river is very shallow and through the history nobody was throwing dead bodies into it. That couldn't happen ever.The end of the movie, when we have scenes from the Bosnia war, was heavily influenced by Serbian public media propaganda. These scenes do not help foreigners to better understand anything about Bosnian war.From the technical point of view, all scenes in the movie supposed to happen in Sarajevo, were taken in another destroyed Bosnian city, Mostar. Producers used heavy fog to cover the fact that the scenes on streets are not taken in Sarajevo.