Cheap Ulysses' Gaze (DVD) (Harvey Keitel, Maia Morgenstern, Erland Josephson) (Theo Angelopoulos) Price

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Customer Reviews of Ulysses' Gaze

A Masterpiece
"A numbing bore?" If Roger Ebert really said that of this film, all i can say is that there is something terribly wrong with Roger Ebert as of late. I beleive he has given his thumbs up to movies like "The Sum of All fears" and "Sam I Am" (this last one litterally being nothing more than a Star Bucks comercial shot like a shampoo comercial).
Ulysses' Gaze is a wonderfull film that like any great pieace of art can be interpreted in any number of ways, depending on the viewer.
The pace of the film is certainly slow, but not in the boring sense but in the character and context building one. In other words, the director is in no hurry to finish the film at the expense of any of the subtlty and humanity necessary to paint his canvass. And in order to drive certain themes home, which unfortunatly are indeed universal, he creates scenes and shoots images that are so charged with emotion and symbolism that anyone who has ever lived in a country with similar situations as those in the balkans can readily identify with them.
This is a powerfull film and its subtlty is worth emphasizing. He really manages to capture the essence of specific situations without ever being at all explicit.
(For those of you interested as well in photography, it is interesting to note that one of the most beautiful scenes in this movie, that of the barge carrying a statue of Lenin down a river, was also used by Josef Koudelka for a picture that appears in his "Caos" book. [ I do have to admit, however, that in my personal belief the scene is a little too long...The one scene of the movie that i personally would have cut a little shorter.Josef Koudelka managed beter results i think]It would be interesting to know if they both, the director and photographer, simply coincided in wanting to incorporate the dismanteling of this one particular statue of Lenin, or if they had previously arranged to both be there...At any rate, the resulting photograph by Koudelka is in my opinion, one of the most beautiful photographs ever.)

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A haunting search for purpose and for meaning in life
Truly I am struck deeply each time I watch this film. Though I do not purport to understand fully the lines of the plot (the rapid shifting between languages and character transitions make it exquisitely challenging to follow), the cinematography is hauntingly gorgeous. The image of the massive statue of Lenin being lifted by crane onto a barge, and floated down the Sava River stays with me even months afterwards.

Harvey Keitel is cast as a Greek-American film director/producer, returned to his Balkan home (north Greece), seeking lost reels of film shot by the Manakis brothers. He believes these to be the very first cinema images of life in the Balkans...in searching for these films, he is metaphorically searching for his own identity...a sense of deeper connection with a past with which his ties have been broken. Hungarian actress Maia Morgenstern is cast as a myriad of women whom Keitel (his character is known only as K...almost Kafkaesque in its enigmatic nature, I find this particular element...) meets throughout his journey through the Balkans...Greece, (FYR)Macedonia, Bosnia.

Though it may be that I am struck by the "Emperor's New Clothes Syndrome" in purporting to understand a kernel of Angelopoulos' intent in this film, I find it particularly effecting because I, like K, am on a journey...both to find out where I am from, and to see where I am going...and perhaps these twain shall meet somewhere beyond my present horizon. In this regard, we can each only hope...more than a film, Angelopoulos has succeeded in creating a successful reflection of what it is to live...it is to journey, ofttimes in search of ourselves...but more than the search, it is the journey that is important...we all come to our Ithaca in the end; only our paths differ.

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One of the top ten movies of the nineties if not the best!
This film deserves all the supreme adjectives that you can imagine. Much more than a simple film ; this work will let you thinking due its deep and disturbing ideas involved. It deals about the human condition , the seek for the epic sense of our life , the bitter sight about the western civilization , the decadence of Greece in the actual world , the weight of the memory , the old images of our parents , the nosthalgy for our beloved country , the vulgarity vs. the aristos , the tragedy of a world that has lost its center , the insanity of the Balcan war , the reflexion about the ancient mythology , the fall of Lenin statue in the Danube , the unforgettable sequence between Kaitel and Josephson in that dark room in which Erland Josephson thinks in loud voice : I{m a cinema lover ; a collector of lost images!. This is a mythical journey through the devasted and hopeless Europe.
I don't know why , but i reminded all along the film this statement from Curzio Malaparte : "Europe is dead , because its sons are born from dead mothers". This thought emerges from Malaparte's pen when he watches a dying mother when his baby is born at once!
Let me tell you something . I've watching almost the films of this poet : Theo Angelopoulus , this film maker is at the level of the giants , I mean Tarkovsky , Bresson , Bergman or Fellini . And if you inquire me about his masterpiece this one wins by far .
Angeloulus thought in Al Pacino at first , but Pacino was busy in another work . So he decided for Kaitel and believe me : this became a wise decision , because Keitel has been one of the giants actors all over the world . And in this case Kaitel makes a personal tour de force and breathtaking acting .
There are so many issues involved in this picture that I hardly may comment in this brief review. But if you want to convince by yourself about an artistic film , this is for you.
Cannes : Grand Jury Prize winner 1995.