DVD Review Of Ulysses’ Gaze
Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos’s 1995 film Ulysses’ Gaze ( To Vlemma Tou Odyssea ) is the first of that director’s four films that I have seen that is not unequivocally a great work of art. Yes, there are arguments that can be made in favor of that claim, but at 173 minutes in length, especially, it takes the most out of a viewer, especially considering that it’s the least poetic of his films I’ve seen (which include Landscape In The Mist , Eternity And A Day , and Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow ). This does not mean it is a bad film, nor that it lacks Angelopoulos’s trademark visual poesy; it has that. But, there are some missing narrative elements, some poorly scripted moments, and a too slow dramatic movement, especially in the latter third of the film, which takes place in the city of Sarajevo. The basic tale is that a nameless exiled Greek-American filmmaker, played by Harvey Keitel (and referred to as ‘A’ in the DVD credits, and in many reviews, although nowhere in the fil...