Bloom

Sean Walsh has created a delightful, beautiful, and very accessible film of James Joyce's "Ulysses".

As a Joycean who has read Ulysses many times and has studied the novel, I realize the immense challenge in bringing this world-shaking novel to the screen. It has only been attempted once before, the 1967 "Ulysses" directed by Joseph Strick.

"Bloom" is elegant and captivating. It does great justice to the novel and is an honest and generally successful attempt to sort out the complexity of this book.

Acting is first rate, especially Angeline Ball (Molly Bloom). Cinematography is meticulous, providing us an historic glimpse of 1904 Dublin.

"Bloom" is more approachable than the '67 "Ulysses" and perhaps not as intense or artistic, but it nevertheless is a superb film and is highly recommended by this James Joyce fan.

Just saw it at the Seattle International Film Festival. I haven't read Ulysses (but I will). My wife read it 40 years ago. We both liked Bloom very much. Molly Bloom was great, as was all the acting. This is not a film for car chase buffs, but if you feel like a pleasant day in Dublin, and are not put off by sexual references, it's just the thing. We did not find it difficult to comprehend and the accent is quite intelligible.

There is a voice-over track which gives one a good feel for Joyce's language. It's great fun to watch the characters drift in and out of fantasies and memories. I don't at all think that one needs to have read Ulysses to have this film be enjoyable.

A total disappointment. I thought the Strick 1967 version was bad; compared to this, that version seems like "Citizen Kane." Where to begin?? The direction is far too facile & literal--much of the film is done in voiceovers, and in some scenes every literal reference finds its way on film. The filming of the "Circe" episode is the most wince-inducing, because we see as "real" what is for the most part dream/hallucination-induced. In addition, the actors are all wrong. Stephen Rea was brilliant in "Crying Game"; however, pushing 60, he's too old for the 38-year-old Leopold Bloom. The guy playing Stephen Dedalus seems like an adolescent and far too giddy for a guy who neither bathes nor has fond memories of his mother's death (never mind his trauma over having a Brit shoot up his domicile). The actress playing Molly __seems__ too young and is too physically fit. (In the book, everyone refers to her as being fat). The only enjoyable parts of the movie had nothing to do with the film production BUT everything to do with Joyce's writing. Read the book! Bob

If they made1001 movie versions of _Ulysses_, none would be as beautifully and compellingly cinematic as the book itself. This is only the second version, as far as I know. But I enjoyed watching it. I suspect it was an effort to expose the book to the Good People of Ireland (Flann O' Brien) in preparation for the big centennial Bloomsday party--so they would know what they were celebrating, and so that the hapless tourists who wondered into Dublin on that day to experience the famous Irish hospitality, etc., might know what these people were celebrating as well. He used to be on the ten-pound note, Joyce, before the Irish switched to Euros.

I don't know if this movie would make any sense at all to people who haven't read the book itself. I have read the book itself, more than once, and some parts of it more even than that.

This version appears to have been written by Gerty MacDowell, after she grew up and got a job at the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, in 2003 (it takes some of us longer to grow up than others--and it seems to have taken her 99 years). I am looking forward to the next 999 versions. Joyce is reported to have said that he meant to keep academics busy for the next 300 years. God only knows how many years he wanted to keep film makers busy (it is a fact that he once tried to open a movie theater in Dublin Himself).

Stephen Rheas' Bloom is nicely Chaplinesque, as is just about everything else in the movie, including the music. All told, _Bloom_ is a nice exercise in nostalgia for a Joyce and a turn-of-the-twentieth-century Ireland that never existed--nostalgia is like that. Nice is nice, but this movie, it goes without saying, is nowhere near as great as _Ulysses_ is a book. Most of the characters and dialogue, as best as I can remember, comes from the book itself--but you can't capture much of that in two hours. But, then, there is ... Love's Old Sweet song.

Let me get this out of the way first and foremost, "Ulysses" is, in my opinion, THE greatest novel of all time; it is a book I've practically worshiped within the past year and I believe that almost everything about it is brilliant, if tedious and difficult at times. "Bloom" is a competent adaptation of the source material, but, there really is no way to TRULY adapt "Ulysses" unless one was willing to turn it into an avant garde miniseries. There are so many aspects of the novel worth exploring, and most of these aspects aren't even touched upon in the film. However, as a film, "Bloom" is quite enjoyable and some sections of the novel are brilliantly and beautifully presented, particularly that of Molly Bloom's (in)famous soliloquy which closes the novel and the film. Angeline Ball pulls off Molly's hypnotic inner voice perfectly, and her voice is paired with a powerful, swelling musical score that crafts a sequence so rich in beauty it nearly matches the masterful words of Joyce.

The performances are mostly quite fantastic across the board. Stephen Rea is very good as the title character (the immortal everyman, Mr. Leopold Bloom!), although I do feel as if his narration of Bloom's thoughts was a bit too dramatic at points. Much of Bloom's consciousness delves into comical, bawdy, and ridiculous territory, and even when Rea is reading aloud lines of such a nature his voice remains soft and serious. However, in the more fantastical and blatantly comic later scenes, his performance does get as goofy as is necessary.

On all fronts, this is a respectable and beautiful motion picture.