Ulysses

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Audience Member A stunning adaptation that captures many of the haunting and nuanced layers of conflict of one of the most profound books ever written. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/07/23 Full Review Audience Member Having read and studied this novel for my English Literature course, I was looking forward to watching its film adaptation. The end result left me feeling a little ambivalent. I felt that the film did very well in capturing the stream-of-consciousness present in Joyce's original text. Like its source material, Ulysses is a film that demands your full attention. If you look away for even a second then you're lost. The narrative constantly jumps around. This isn't an insult to the film, but rather a portrayal of Joyce's writing style. Ulysses as a text jumps from idea to idea, from writing style to writing style. It is a difficult text to read, but a rewarding one. And so is the film, although I was disappointed at how the film watered down some of the book's more explicit scenes. I felt that THIS was an insult to Joyce to wanted to push the boundaries of anything that came before. Read my full review for more: http://goo.gl/WGkf16 Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/07/23 Full Review Audience Member Total crap like the book! Rated 0.5/5 Stars •  Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 02/05/23 Full Review Audience Member The novel has long been thought to be unfilmable, an opinion which I tend to agree with. Joyce's novel was as much about the undefinable workings of his characters' minds as it was about their actions, if not more so. However, to the extent that Ulysses provides the visual journey of Joyce's characters on their odyssey through Dublin, the film is triumphant. There are little things that kill the atmosphere (like a speedboat visible in the opening sequence), but overall it's great fun to watch. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/24/23 Full Review Audience Member ...What on earth did I just watch? I have a relaxation thing I do when I'm trying to go to sleep: I listen to an audio dramatization of something or other. As I listen, I create mental pictures of the scenario being acted out, but make everything as ridiculously literal as possible. If one of the characters tells the other, "You're like a lion," I adjust my mental image to make that person a literal lion. This engages my brain just enough that I don't wander off and start obsessing about my day (which is what keeps me awake the most at night) but not enough that I stay focused on it, and I drift off to sleep. Watching this movie was surreal, because that was what happened. Every metaphor was shown to us in literal form on the screen, especially once it hit the section with the hallucinations/dreams/whatever the heck those were. But what is a relaxing mental exercise in my mind is creepy and bizarre and awkward to follow visually in a movie. That point is when the movie lost me. I was mildly interested in the story up until that point, and then I got almost 30 minutes of rambling dream sequence. That finally ended, but the movie never really won back my trust or my interest. Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 02/07/23 Full Review Audience Member A piece of cultural history, for sure. The best known (albeit still slightly obscure) filmed version of the greatest novel of the 20th century and probably all time. This low-budget art film is faithful to the words of James Joyce and allows the images, accompanied with narration, to make up the stream of consciousness. Virtually anyone who hasn't read the novel will be confused and probably hate it, but I've been studying it for almost two years, and I found a lot to enjoy in this film. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/20/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Ulysses

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