Interesting allegory on Balkan syndrome and very good directing in artistic way, but this is about it. Everything else is a failure. Composition that mostly comprehends directors impression on Balkan phenomena and its reasons and consequences. Role of the film that has been recorded and hidden is probably the formula for Balkan happiness that can't be found. Beginning of the world civilization, beginning of all great wars and conflicts and world in small - these are the Balkans. But no trace, no reason no recipe, no solution. This is good. Very well represented - artistic as the film suppose to be and by all means I do support Theo by that. But ... I don't believe that you can make a film that is going to be slight idea of an expressionist understood only by himself. The film should be artistic way to show the reality to the spectator, an art lover. I have lived most of my life on Balkans, where I was born, among that many years in Greece, but still I cannot follow all the impressions of the director placed in the film. I believe that impressions are for the audience - as a spectator but also as a film maker. All in all, great actor as Harvey Keitel could be used in much better way. The same for the never ending resources on Balkan ideas. 5 out of 10 for Theo.

Ulysses' Haze : There isn't one way to make movies. All the artists are wholly free to choose (and responsible to) the style of making what they want. But the viewers also are free to choose. Whatever the movie was, wherever it came from, whoever made it, there is certain feeling, idea, power that CAN affect you, or not ! Although nothing and no one is the same, but ironically, it is great fact that your own feelings for one movie or artist are the same of somebody out there. So, on the basis of that, let me see what's so hateful about this movie so its style.Ulysses' Maze : By all means, it's different. But even if, in its kind of difference.. It's so awful. What kind of movie, any movie, that alienates its viewers ? Ulysses' Gaze is so dead. It is one unforgettable invitation to watch death and live it ! Maybe that's exactly what was the tremendous genius Theo Angelopoulos thinking of ?!First off, it's beyond boring. The heavy thick pace will definitely distract you so powerfully. Oh yes, it's slow to give you the chance to contemplate, but certainly it managed to sleep you, since either there isn't much to think and contemplate about. Even your poor try to stand it, would lose. I lost the last strength of patience while the long very damn long sequence of Lenin's statue. OH MY GOD, that was too hard to follow. It compelled me to disbelieve anything this apoplexy says. Once the interaction is gone, the whole deal is finished. I found myself literally out of it, well.. It pushes you to that ! Not to mention the theatrical style (UGH !) how can I bear someone who's working at "film" to turn it into "theater" ?!, or to make the whole screen as white smoke, (I love radio but not like that !). It's not renewal inasmuch as incapacity...Or Harvey Keitel as the lead ?? Did you see him talking to the girl when she was running next to the moving train?, did you see him laughing when he found the movie?, did you see him at the end scene? : Great comedy !. His face was stony, and his charisma didn't impassion. De Niro was smart enough to reject the role. Basically how to say anything through that dumb excuse for a script? Detached-fantasy-journeys into one's life could tell about nation's history but not in this transcendent, indigent and cold way.Surely the attempt to narrate differently was promising but the absurd plot could've been more dexterous, enjoyable, and less dull. Many sequences were full of braggart stupidity masquerading as sublime art (the black umbrellas' scene for one instance!). If you think of it as poetry, then it's the most adolescent, silly, and alleged cinematic poetry I've ever seen.It takes a super fairness to admit that I liked the music, the cinematography. Though all the rest (the acting, the editing,..etc) was barrenly tasteless in a way that didn't give you chance not to endure it for a second watching, but to endure it for a first one ! What bothered me the most, other than being in front of it for foul full 176 min, that the one and only (Theo Angelopoulos) was so angry (and confused !) when this film lost Cannes Film Festival's main award !! That got on my nerve crazily ! Ulysses' Laze : Well, any artiest must look at his work to know where he was wrong. But Mr. Angelopoulos will never do such a thing. He's a god, an idol for himself. So he can never be wrong ! And all of his blind lovers can't (or don't dare to) find anything may be slightly wrong with his work. He's the great yet the greatest. I challenge any enamored of Mr. Angelopoulos to tell me what possibly could be not good about this movie. Actually the ultimate replay would be : nothing ! There is nothing like it so naturally it's wonderful ! Whilst there is nothing like the plague, though it's not wonderful ! Ulysses' Daze : So, Mr. A (could refer to "ailing" more than "Anglo" !) was searching for the first movie ever shot in the Balkans as the originality /the creative essence that has been destroying to lose everything because the foolishness of the modern human which led to war/ the final absolute madness that ended everything and everyone. And all the intellectual's efforts will lastly make nothing. WAW, the only problem is that it had been made by originality that was effectively destructive for its movie (as well as us !) to lose everything it says or shows ! They're so simple words yet in the smallest letters ever, that is strenuous and unfruitful in the same bad time. Like a strong nightmare it worked not for the sake of it, but for making me refuse to watch it (read: stand it) ever again ! Great achievement for a movie that is !Ulysses Razes : (Angelo-mad-about-himself-poulos) as the maker of it is the only one who sees its joy, the only one who feels its trueness, the only one who finds it the greatest film ever made, and doesn't believe that anybody may feel anything but that. It exemplifies what kind of distending ego that we have here ? Mr. Theo, I'm sorry to say it but...The pleasure was all yours.Ulysses' Ease : Is it a spectacular classic for someone out there? Clearly not for me. I hated it, hate it, and I'll hate it as a typical example for a work that was murdered by its maker's hopeless megalomania.It's not a tableau about the human's havoc; it's one about a film's havoc.

I have to confess that my introduction to Mr. A's works was not completely successful. He is a very talented film maker -this one is given. His shots are breathtaking, the music score takes you out of this world and the subject of the movie is quite respectable. What would you expect from the movie which title is "Ulysses' Gaze"? You would expect Ulysses embarking in the exhausting journey in search of his roots, himself, his one true love forgotten but still living deeply inside his soul which he "has to gaze into if he tries to find it" (according Plato). In this movie the roots are represented by the first cinematic footage ever filmed in Greece and Ulysses - Greek director "A" who had left his home country 35 years ago and now he is back and he HAS to find the footage. Why? Frankly, I am not sure but to find it he is ready to travel by car, by train, by boat, and by foot through the Balkan countries torn by war. In his quest, he also visits and relives his past as a young boy in the country he was born, later left but never was able to forget. He meets a lot of women who fell in love with him from the first sight but he seems to be forever captured by one true love because every woman he meets has the same face (they all are played by the same actress, Maia Morgenstern). I like the movies like this - meaningful, personal, beautiful, the movies that have a lot to say but never rush. This movie has some problems though and one problem is called Harvey Keitel. I love Harvey, I think he is a great actor - brave, intense, ironic, clever, tough but vulnerable. Sadly, for all 173 minutes of "Ulysses Gaze", he looked like he was just about to say, "I am Mr. Wolfe. I solve problems but what am I doing here? How did I let myself take the role that I am so uncomfortable with?" Another problem may be in the unbearable self-importance of what Theo Angelopoulos had to say to the world. Or how he said it. There was one scene in the movie that could've been moving, warm, and beautiful - the people dance in the room, celebrate New Year and the dance continues on as the years pass by. It could've been moving but Angelopoulos chose to make it strangely cold and remote. Why? I don't know. There was one scene in the movie at the 2.5 hours mark that almost made me forget all the negatives - the orchestra on the snow in Sarajevo playing melody so marvelous that it could've easily been written by Orpheus whose music used to hypnotize every living creature on Earth.I don't regret seeing this movie and I will see more Angelopoulos' films in the future but I could've done something better with 173 minutes of my life.

As a citizen of Sarajevo who has spent all four years under the siege of the city in nineties in Sarajevo, I can confirm that nobody has been killed on the streets of Sarajevo because he or she was of Serb nationality. I can say that during the war in Bosnia, streets of Sarajevo were safer place than they are today. To throw bodies into the river flowing through Sarajevo is also nonsense. After the Serbian family has been killed on the street, the Muslim soldier in the movie says "Throw bodies into Miljacka!" and it has been translated as "Throw them into the river!", because an average movie viewer cannot know the name of the river flowing through Sarajevo. Whoever visited Sarajevo knows that Miljacka river is very shallow and through the history nobody was throwing dead bodies into it. That couldn't happen ever.The end of the movie, when we have scenes from the Bosnia war, was heavily influenced by Serbian public media propaganda. These scenes do not help foreigners to better understand anything about Bosnian war.From the technical point of view, all scenes in the movie supposed to happen in Sarajevo, were taken in another destroyed Bosnian city, Mostar. Producers used heavy fog to cover the fact that the scenes on streets are not taken in Sarajevo.