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Ulysses' Gaze

Ulysses' Gaze

List Price: $19.98
Your Price: $17.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: a masterpiece
Review: i have no words to express how deep it touched me, watching that particular dancing scene, where all the generations and ages passed by, a ten-minute-scene without any cut!-and a second one, Keitel walking through the bombed city-war as horrible as noone can imagine...wow- an underrated movie and director for sure. Angelopoulos' movies are cinema at it's best, and Karaindrou's soundtracks (to almost every of his movies) are superb!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A - all of us
Review: I love this movie , although it is very long compared with other movies. Nevertheless I had no problems enjoying it.
It's like Bertolucci's 1900 : it has a wonderful pace!!
Falling asleep is just impossible because everything in this movie is so beautiful.
The movie's about life and what it's like to live.
You recognize that although life can be very complex, it is always very simple. Love and understanding can be found everywhere ,and (like the main character)every human being is in search for them. Although the world may seem to be in a hopeless state you can still find happines.
Life is hard but worth living.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The absolute masterpiece.
Review: If cinema is the travel of the gaze,then the absolute movie is what Ulisses saw. Ulisses gaze is the cinema itself. The blue ship which travels us along the sky. The best movie ever made. Directed by the most important director alive.By Theo Angelopoulos (as M.Scorcese said in Cannes)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent movie - Not an excellent transfer
Review: If you admire Tarkovski's work, then you won't be disappointed by the way Angeloupulos blends acting, music and camera work. Everything is remarkable in this film. No wonder Tonino Guerra collaborated in the script.

5 stars to the movie/ 1 to the transfer. FOX LORBER has been releasing incredible foreign movies, but they seem no to pay much attention to their transfers. There should be more quality control when transfering a movie, otherwise the DVD format becomes purposeless.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Another Angelopoulos Film of Contemplation
Review: If you are not familiar with the Greek director, Theo Angelopoulos, and are used to the fast-paced filming of most Hollywood films, than you will probably find this film prententious and slow-moving. One must come to an Angelopoulos film knowing that the director works the camera and themes of his films in direct opposition to Hollywood's standards. His films almost always are lengthy, and his camera movements through scenes very slow. His is a cinema of contemplation, as author Andrew Horton has noted. The film is based upon the story of the film makers, the Manakia Brothers (who really did exist) who documented the culture of the Balkans, and the main character, a Greek-American film director's search for three lost film reels of theirs. The film borrows also from the concepts of Homer's Odyssey in terms of its "journey to Ithaca" premise. The Ithaca in this case is the three lost film reels. Throughout the journey, Angelopoulos makes poignant statements about the suffering of people in war time and in political regimes. The scene of a dismantled Lenin statue floating in a boat is meant to show the dissolution of communism. The Sarajevo film archivist, a Jewish man, is meant to portray the negative effects of anti-semitism. The film as a whole is meant to stimulate thought and contemplation regarding large issues, and not to wrap things up in a typical tidy Hollywood ending. This is a film to study, not to view as an entertainment diversion. It also helps to be familiar with other films Angelopoulos has made as his films are inter-connected with recurring themes. Overall, Ulysses Gaze stands as one of his finest works, and a film that any person interested in classical myth and historical events would find enriching.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Probably not what you expect!
Review: If you go and get this movie expecting all of its meaning to fall into your lap, you're bound to be dissapointed. One viewing is never enough for an Angelopolos film, and, like with any artistic work that refers to another, it helps to know where he is coming from. 'Ulysses' Gaze' parallels both the poetry of Mr. Kavathi (consider Kavathi's poems about Ithaca) and Homer's 'Oddyssey.' I also reccomend works by Nikos Kazantzakis like 'The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel' (out of print; check your library) and 'Zorba the Greek.'

Keitel's character, 'Mr. A.' is, just like Odysseus, the everyman, in search of 'home' (that is, himself), and also these rolls of film, called 'a gaze' at various points. The film and A's quest are, in essence, is one for self through a connection to an other, and, in many ways, is similar to Angelopolos' 'quest' of producing the film (why do you think the character's name is 'A?').

Though I'll not give away the ending, I will explain its meaning, as I see it: understanding the experiences of another by way of common ground is enough; Keitel's little weepy speech at the end refers to Odysseus as if to say that all human beings have the same feelings and experiences in common on an essential level.

Because this is true especially in 'Ulysses' Gaze,' you don't need to read all of the books I mentioned above to understand it at an essential level, but to experience it at its deepest, kindly consider my reccomended reading and watch the film with an eye towards understanding it, because this is how T. A. means for us to watch it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Probably not what you expect!
Review: If you go and get this movie expecting all of its meaning to fall into your lap, you're bound to be dissapointed. One viewing is never enough for an Angelopolos film, and, like with any artistic work that refers to another, it helps to know where he is coming from. 'Ulysses' Gaze' parallels both the poetry of Mr. Kavathi (consider Kavathi's poems about Ithaca) and Homer's 'Oddyssey.' I also reccomend works by Nikos Kazantzakis like 'The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel' (out of print; check your library) and 'Zorba the Greek.'

Keitel's character, 'Mr. A.' is, just like Odysseus, the everyman, in search of 'home' (that is, himself), and also these rolls of film, called 'a gaze' at various points. The film and A's quest are, in essence, is one for self through a connection to an other, and, in many ways, is similar to Angelopolos' 'quest' of producing the film (why do you think the character's name is 'A?').

Though I'll not give away the ending, I will explain its meaning, as I see it: understanding the experiences of another by way of common ground is enough; Keitel's little weepy speech at the end refers to Odysseus as if to say that all human beings have the same feelings and experiences in common on an essential level.

Because this is true especially in 'Ulysses' Gaze,' you don't need to read all of the books I mentioned above to understand it at an essential level, but to experience it at its deepest, kindly consider my reccomended reading and watch the film with an eye towards understanding it, because this is how T. A. means for us to watch it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Somebody nudge me when its over.
Review: Indulgent pseudo-intellectual prattle. I'm not afraid of a thinking film, nor do I mind reading a foreign film's subtitles, but the sheer torpor with which this film moved was topped only by the pretentious insight it seemed to purport to.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Somebody nudge me when its over.
Review: Indulgent pseudo-intellectual prattle. I'm not afraid of a thinking film, nor do I mind reading a foreign film's subtitles, but the sheer torpor with which this film moved was topped only by the pretentious insight it seemed to purport to.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Powerful
Review: It's rare when a film can be as powerful as a great book but this one did it. At the same time it dazzeled one with its vagery, abstractness, mystical humanism and outright terror at the condition mankind has arrived at in the end of a century and a millenium. The ending in the fog was numbing, Keitel's final dialogue chilling. This was strictly a European film, its existentialism beyond the grasp of American audiences.


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