Bloom

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.

Some of Leo Bloom may as well be in Gaelic, I simply can't divine what he's saying. I'm looking at this on a DVD with only Spanish subtitles. Ulysses is difficult enough reading. Having to try and divine the all important voice-over without captions is crazy. But I notice many artsy fartsy British Isles stuff comes to the US without subtitles. The idea is there's such a small market in the states for such DVDs that spending money on subtitles just whittles the already small profit, smaller.

The film has inspired me to go back and tackle the book again. I haven't read a line of it in 40 years. At a minimum I won't leave the book until I've read the entire Molly Bloom soliloquy. Its what Ulysses journeyed home to hear.

Bloom (or Bl.,m if you're to go by the opening credits) had the potential to follow in the footsteps of what is regarded as the greatest written novel of the 20th century, the Joyce classic Ulysses, an epic ramble around Dublin. What we have here though is merely a supplement to the novel, an illustrated guide to the main parts of the book. Anyone wishing to enjoy this purely as a cinematic event will be disappointed, as the film seems to be almost completely inaccessible to someone not versed in the book. The major plot points (and there are numerous) are lightly touched on (eg Bloom's 'Jewishness') and then we get a plethora of narration taken verbatum from the book over scene after scene on beaches! Obviously the size of the budget limited this film greatly, but it seems the one crucial element missing from the book was the actual walking itself. Since the book focuses on the main characters walking around Dublin, you would expect some in the film, but given the changing face of Dublin 100 years in the future, the film was severely restricted, much to it's detriment. The film had potential yes, but perhaps too much was bitten off, & the pretentious ending, coupled with manipulative a score ruins even the ideas trying to be expressed by this too-faithful adaptation.

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.

1904, Dublin. Stephen Dedalus is an English poet in the service of the Catholic Church in Ireland; Leopold Bloom is a tragic figure who walks the streets of Dublin while his wife, Molly, commits adultery with barely the regard to try and conceal it. With the streets of Dublin as our colourful background, we take a journey into the lives and minds of these three characters.

Not being a cultured man I have never read Ulysses and the fact that it was 100 years since the day the story was set was not being to be enough reason for me to change that fact. However, being an uncultured man, I was very happy to watch a film version of that book and it was this that brought me to see this film on the 100th anniversary. Before the film all I knew of the main character (title character here) was that comedian Eddie Izzard had compared him to Scooby-Doo in that he was a tragic, cowardly character that we root for but I was happy to let the film show me the book (although I was aware that it was never going to be able to capture all of it). The story is very loose when considered on the level of a traditional narrative and at times it just seems to be so lost in itself that it is impossible to really care or follow. At best it is frustratingly difficult to get into and it never really feels like it has any structure apart from the start and the end. The start is a nice introduction but the ending only has structure in a rather pat attempt to give it a) some sort of ending that relates to at least one part of the film, and b) a happy ending to boot. It doesn't work and just seems to come out of nowhere even if the dialogue is great.

The film doesn't have an epic look but that is down to it's budget and, considering that, I thought they had done well with the shoot and managed to hide a lot of it's limitations with a solid shoot. In terms of dialogue the film has several occasional highs, which I can only assume come from the book either directly or with minor amendments. However the fact that it has a nice imagination and some good visual touches does not disguise the fact that it is very uninvolving as a film and lacks enough of its other qualities to really make it worth a watch.

The cast are mixed indeed. I thought O'Conor was pretty much absent without leave for most of his scenes and I never once got more than a vague understanding of his character and, judging by his performance, I would say that he had no better grasp than I did. Rea however is great – I had no preconception of Leopold so I felt that Rea did well to deliver a solid character in a film where almost nothing was solid. Ball may have little to do but she is also good value even if the film betrays her by making her the focal point of a happy ending having barely touched her throughout (unlike her men!). Some of the support cast are good but really the main reason I stayed with the film till the end was Rea's performance.

Overall this is not a great film, although I do not know how it compares to the book because I have not read it (but other comments on this site make it clear what they think!). It has occasional highs that include some poetic dialogue and an interesting visual imagination but mostly it is just frustratingly difficult to get into and offers no hope. It tries to structure a plot but it only seems to have annoyed fans by being simplistic and annoyed me by being a failed attempt at story. Maybe worth seeing for it's good points but not a very good film at all and certainly not one fans should come to.