Ulysses

I saw this film, the adaptation of James Joyce's most famous novel which is one of the most important and complex works of the 20th century literature, in the early 90s. The Videotape was on the shelf in the local library where I worked at the time. When I saw the title, I could not believe my eyes, and said to myself: "This just can't happen because it is impossible." But I held in my hands the evidence to the fact that the epitome of the unfilmable book had indeed been adapted to the screen. Even before I started watching, I was fascinated with audacity of the film's creators who were not afraid to aim a blow at the most famous literary "stream of consciousness" of the 20th century. The film left many parts of the books out and could not capture the whole realm of book's richness, it would be impossible, but the attempt still made me feel respect and appreciation to the film director/co-writer Joseph Strick and everyone involved for making an interesting and entertaining motion picture from the incredibly complex, versatile, polyphonic novel which is filled with the dizzying flight of thought, for which there is no limit in either space or time.

What "Ulysses"- the film did right, it is certainly a cinematic portrait of Dublin, James Joyce's city that lives, sounds and moves during a single day, known in literature as Bloomsday, June 16, 1904. Joyce once wrote that he wanted to describe Dublin in in such way that even in hundred years if the city disappears from the face of the earth, it could be restored based on the novel "Ulysses". Now, in addition to the Joyce's prose, there is a movie portrait of Joyce's Dublin carefully reproduced with its streets, avenues, harbor, docks, quays, pubs, the "red lights" district, cathedrals, cemetery, etc.

I was very impressed by Milo O 'Shea in the role of Leopold Bloom. That's how I always imagined Bloom's appearance, body language, behavior, the whole persona.

The best and most memorable are last two scenes of the film; a long surreal "Circe" depicting Bloom's and Stephen Daedalus visit to a brothel, and of course, the culmination of the film and the novel, 'Penelope'. Molly Bloom, (Barbara Jefford) , caught on a thin line between waking and dreaming just the moments before she falls asleep, thinks about very intimate events in her life, recent and long gone. She reminisces about her and Bloom's present and past and finally falls asleep with the most beautiful and life affirming thoughts ever captured in English language: "...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." Molly's inner monologue takes almost 30 minutes in the film but it is rich, playful, feminine, wave-like spiral and soothing. It is so beautiful, and Jefford made it her own yet relating to any viewer regardless of gender that I could listen to it again and again.

In my opinion, "Ulysses" (1967) adapted by Joseph Strick is interesting, even if not completely successful film experiment, which was awarded the Oscar nomination for adapted screenplay. Incidentally, I have quite a seditious idea that "Ulysses" has been successfully transferred to the screen and the film has turned out amazingly captivating, entertaining and profound. He has another title and is the adaptation of another work of literature. I mean the posthumous Stanley Kubrick's film, his swan song "Eyes Wide Shut." But this is a topic for another review.

The one utterly 'unfilmable' novel was indeed filmed, and with a fair degree of success, by Joseph Strick in 1967. "Ulysses" is set over the course of one day, June 16th, 1904 in Dublin, now celebrated annually as 'Bloomsday' in deference to the book's central character, Leopold Bloom but Strick chose to update it to the time the film was made perhaps on the basis that the novel itself is 'timeless' or maybe on the basis that the events depicted could have happened at any time. It charts a journey through Dublin by Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, the young teacher and hero of Joyce's more accessible "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man".

It is, of course, the book that sits on the shelves of the intelligensia, mostly unread, but essential to show off; the stream of consciousness novel to end them all. On the other hand, it may have gone unread for years as it was originally banned in most countries on the grounds of obscenity. That the film works at all is a great credit to Strick but mostly the critics didn't go for it feeling, perhaps, that the director over-simplified it, changing the text and that the updating was tantamount to sacrilige. He also chose to shoot it in widescreen when the material may have cried out for something more intimate but it is superbly shot by Wolfgang Suschitzky while the cast are mostly splendid. Milo O'Shea is a superb Bloom and Barbara Jefford is outstanding as his wife, Molly while the Dublin locations now add up to a great time capsule of what life was like there in the mid-sixties.

Having enjoyed Joyce's complex novel so keenly I was prepared to be disappointed by Joseph Strick's and Fred Haines's screenplay, given the fabulous complexity of the original text. However, the film turned out to be very well done and a fine translation of the tone, naturalism, and levity of the book.

It certainly helps to have read the original text before viewing the film. I imagine the latter would seem disjointed, with very odd episodes apparently randomly stitched together, without a prior reading of the text to help grasp the plot.

It's amazing to see how "filthy" the film is, given that it was shot in Dublin in 1967. The Irish film censors only, finally, unbanned it for viewing by general audiences in Ireland as late as 2000 (it was shown to restricted audiences in a private cinema club, the Irish Film Theatre, in the late 1970s). Joyce's eroticism is not simply naturalistic and raunchy, it offers many wildly "perverse" episodes. Never mind that so many of these fetishes were unacceptable when the book was published in 1922 - they were still utterly taboo when the film was made in 1967.

It is astonishing and heartening to watch the cream of the Irish acting profession of the 1960s, respected players all, daring to utter and enact Joyce's hugely transgressive text with such gusto.

Bravo!

Ulysses as a film should in no way be compared with the novel, for they are two entirely different entities. However, that being said, the film still manages to maintain many of the elements that made the book work, but since it is a visual medium, it is more difficult to pull of stream-of-consciousness. I think this is the best film they could have made with the material... and this is from someone that routinely rants about films not being like their literary counterparts. I recommend the book, but the movie is still entertaining.

Norman Mailer once observed, "There is a particular type of really bad novel that makes a great motion picture." With that in mind, this feeble attempt to film the greatest 20th Century English novel falls flat, as pointless an exercise as dramatizing "The Leviathan" by Thomas Hobbes or the Declaration of Independence. It just can't be done. Joyce pioneered the plotless novel, concentrating on character development and situation, together with the melding of his characters' inner thoughts running in a hodge-podge of images and overlapping, run-on sentences. For those unfamiliar with the work, "Ulysses" is the story of an author in search of a character about whom he can write a novel: two men, one middle-aged, one young, wandering aimlessly through Dublin for 18 hours, finally meeting in a brothel, and then discussing their day over a cup of cocoa. That's it. Joyce himself joked that he had written a novel that would keep English professors busy for the next century, and the deciphering of his masterpiece has become a cottage industry. This is not a motion picture: rather, it is a tour de force in the nature of Charles Laughton reading from the New York Telephone directory: the presentation may be brilliant, but the exercise is pointless. The actors recite Joyce's prose brilliantly and Milo O'Shea, Maurice Reeves and Barbara Jefford, as Leopold Bloom, Stephen Daedalus and Molly Bloom respectively, look exactly like what one would imagine the characters to appear, but this is hardly enough to sustain the viewers' interests for an excess of two hours. Literary critic John Greenway observed, "To read it ['Ulysses'] with ease, one should have a PhD in comparative languages and literature." Indeed, Joyce himself spoke some 15 languages fluently and his work abounds with multiple lingual puns. Caveat: unless you have at least majored in English Literature and taken a graduate course in James Joyce, you won't have the slightest idea what is going on here - nor will you care.