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.

Joyce's 'Ulysses' is the record of a single day (16th June 1904) in the lives of three characters in Dublin - Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus and Bloom's wife Molly, and deals with their actions, inner thoughts and relationships. The day itself was meant to be unexceptional – it actually commemorates Joyce's first date with his girlfriend, Nora Barnacle. In the manner of such records it does not follow traditional plot structure. This of course does not mean the book is unfilmable. Quite the contrary in fact - we have seen the video diary become increasingly ubiquitous and there is a recent fashion for films that trace interlocking lives through short periods of time.Additionally Joyce himself in his novel employs all kinds of innovative cinematic techniques with flashbacks, dissolves and close ups (Joyce was very interested in film and actually opened Dublin's first cinema in 1909, but he was a better writer than a businessman).Joyce hoped Eisenstein might film his book and perhaps the ultimate film of 'Ulysses' is yet to come, but in their own very different ways Joseph Strick with Ulysses (1966) and Sean Walsh with 'Bloom' have done the job for two successive generations.However the book - arguably the 20th century's English literary masterpiece - has an iconic status that may prevent a filmmaker departing too widely from the text. In 'Bloom' Sean Walsh, plainly a lover of Joyce, has been anxious to follow the text as closely as possible and also to create a period drama that has the genuine look and feel of the time. But while a film that remains so faithful to the text may satisfy an audience of keen Joyceans it will mystify those who have not read the book.Although the day in question is a century ago the book actually ranges over a plethora of surprisingly modern topics: sexual relationships including adultery, the power of the press, publicity and advertising, popular culture and music, nationalism and political cynicism, alienation, racial and ethnic prejudice, technology and consumerism - to name but a few.To my mind Joseph Strick's 1966 film, which is very new wave - right down to its minimalist score - and which treats the story in 'modern dress' with modern setting (for the time) had a contemporary look and feel that allowed the audience to reflect that the topics pursued were every bit as relevant to them as to the actors on the screen. By contrast 'Bloom' plays as a nice historical drama but one that is about as relevant to our own lives as Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.Ultimately the greatest film of Ulysses will come when the filmmaker attempts not verisimilitude but instead works from a script that will be 'freely adapted from Joyce's Ulysses'. That day will come when Joyceans – and the Joyce estate – permit. But after all it is worth reflecting that Joyce's book is itself but a free adaptation of Homer's original.

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.

Bloomsday 100 should have yielded a fitting tribute to Ireland's great James Joyce. Unfortunately, this was not to be. I was insulted by this movie on so many levels. First and foremost, this film had the potential to blow audiences away. With material as rich as Ulysses, the filmmakers had a unique opportunity to bring a novel that has a reputation for being difficult to a whole new audience. What they achieved instead was a pedestrian annotation of a few of the novel's plot points. Additionally, the acting was stilted (especially the part of Stephen Dedalus), the lighting was abhorrent, the art direction lacking and the shot selection shoddy. With a veritable army of Joyce scholars spread across the globe, one would think SOMEONE would have been consulted about important themes, artistic interpretation, and the smorgasbord of visual, musical, literary and historical references in Joyce's text. And the music - absolutely insulting. Joyce included literally hundreds of references to music in Ulysses. All those fabulous resources were abandoned in favour of the singsong simplicity of the original score. Digital features can be done so well these days and independent film-making, especially with the rich textually of Ulysses behind this production, should have freed the filmmakers to follow in the revolutionary spirit of Ireland's great epic. Instead, they produced hardly the epic film the book deserved, but something akin to a first year student film. Farcical. However, this production does leave the door wide open for an artistic visionary to tackle the book properly and produce a film worthy of the monumental Leopold Bloom.