"Ulysses' Gaze", IFC, members and guests only "Greece is dying," bellows the anguished taxi driver across a snow covered valley, "after living among ruins for thousands of years." In an Angelopoulos film, this kind of thing is commonplace, so our phlegmatic hero, "A", (Harvey Keitel) does not feel any need to respond. As we come to know him over the three hours of Ulysses' Gaze, which took second place to Kusturica's Underground for the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year, A tends to keep his own counsel, only breaking his silence to make some highly elliptical statements, delivered in stilted English in a monotone, as if, at times, Keitel is reading autocues.
A film director who has lived in exile in the US for 35 years, A has returned to his native Greece in search of three lost reels of film shot by the Manakis brothers, the first Greek film makers, in the early years of the century. The quest for the reels, which are a record of a vanished way of life, encompasses the whole human adventure" and takes him from Greece to Macedonia and Albania, to Bucharest and Constanza and finally to Sarajevo. What he wants to see is the first gaze of these film makers, which he thinks must have an absolute innocence and purity, like the gaze of Odysseus/Ulysses upon the lands he travelled through.
Angelopoulos's epic journey of homecoming and quest is less concerned with Homeric parallels than with a meditation on the tangled history of the Balkan countries, where the legacies of centuries of conflicts of religion, race, identity and politics, as well as personal histories, are inscribed in the landscape. The film's style moves seamlessly between a heightened naturalism, theatrical set pieces and tableaux, which allow A to see scenes from his own family's past enacted before him in a series of dreamlike sequences.
There are weaknesses, certainly in addition to Keitel's portentous dialogue, the recurrence of an archetypal woman, played by the same actress (Maia Morgenstern) in different guises, is a rather weak, tiresome device. At times she is a figure from A's past, at others she is the kind of temptress encountered by Odysseus on his journey; least plausibly, she is a terrifyingly intense film archivist in Sophia who lunges at him on a train, and from whom he parts saying unconvincingly "I'm crying because I can't love you".
Yet none of this can detract from the beauty and power of the images that Angelopoulos has created refugees in the mountains along the Albanian border; an aerial shot of a phalanx of protestors in Athens at night, facing each other across a police blockade, one side carrying umbrellas, the other torches; the giant statue of Lenin drifting slowly downstream as onlookers line the five banks, bowing and crossing themselves in sequence as it passes; the street scenes in Sarajevo, emphasising the circularity of this century's history and the sense of loss and grief, as A returns to the location of the Balkan conflict that triggered the first World War.
The relationship between cinema and history is explored throughout and there is a moral and spiritual earnestness here that is reminiscent of Tarkovsky. In the end A's utopian, obsessive quest to recapture the early film makers pure, unsullied gaze remains frustrated although, in fact, he seems to suspect this all along. Just as he told the archivist how he had bean unable to record the birthplace of Apollo with his camera, so we see A in the closing frame sitting before the blank screen as the coveted images have finally eluded him. A few moments earlier we watched an almost white screen while the sounds of violent death, the gunfire and screams, of A's Sarajevan friends could be heard in the foreground. It is as if, for Angelopoulos, some things are too terrible to be shown on film.
"Devil In A Blue Dress" (15) Screen at, D'Olier Sfreet, Dublin 2
Having made his mark two years ago with the gritty contemporary thriller, One False Move, director Carl Franklin follows it with an intriguing drama set in late 1940s Los Angeles in Devil In A Blue Dress. Adapted by Franklin from the detective novel by Walter Mosely, the film features Denzel Washington at his most charismatic as Easy Rawlins, a decorated war veteran who finds himself out of work when he returns to Los Angeles.
Offered money to help locate Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals), who is known to frequent the city's black bars and is the estranged fiancee of a political candidate, Rawlins finds himself drawn into a murky web of murder, blackmail, duplicity and corruption. The film acutely catches the racial tension of the period when Rawlins is forced to cross into what's defined as white territory, and this atmosphere of, intrigue and suspicion enhances a film which is notably strong on period detail.
There are some loose ends in the movie, and the supposedly mysterious blue dresswearing woman played by Jennifer Beats is disappointingly underwritten. However, Franklin smoothly alternates the humour and the tension, the production values are very impressive, and the film features a notable discovery in Don Cheadle as Rawlin's urbane sidekick.
"Sgt Bilko" (PG) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex UCIs, Dublin
Few, if any, American TV comedies can match the superb Sgt Bilko for comic invention, sharp, rapid fire dialogue and firmly etched characterisations, and it is testimony to its enduring appeal that The Phil Silvers Show (to give it its correct title), which ran from 1955 to 1959, returns for yet another round of welcome repeats on BBC2 next Monday evening.
Jonathan Lynn's feature film of Sgt Bilko - which opens here today simultaneously, with the US - has Steve Martin as the devious Ernie Bilko. It takes away the character's glasses and gives him a full head of hair instead, reassembles all the familiar minor characters and relocates the setting to present day California.
The slender storyline, which is essentially true to the spirit of the original series, forces the manipulative Bilko to draw on all his wiliest ingenuity when an old army enemy determines to expose his numerous scams. Although it generates quite a few laughs along the way, the screenplay could hardly pass muster for an average 25 minute episode of the TV series, and certainly not for a full length feature, even though Steve Martin seems much more comfortable in the role than in his recent ill chosen movies such as Leap of Faith, A Simple Twist Of Fate, Father Of The Bride 2 and the abysmal Mixed Nuts.
Dunston Checks In (PG) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
From King Kong to Greystoke, the history of apes in films is an unhappy one and our nearest relatives fare no better in this relentlessly cheery comedy, aimed squarely at the pre teen market. Dunstan is a trained orangutan, the unwitting servant of jewel thief, Rupert Everett, who checks in to the palatial Majestic Hotel to prey upon its guests. But the hotel manager's sons (Jason Alexander and Eric Lloyd) discover their hairy guest and foil the thief. There's nothing particularly objectionable about a piece of formula fluff like Dunston Checks In, and Faye Dunaway does an enjoyable cameo turn as a Leona Helmesley like hotel magnate, but any self respecting child will see through it instantly as a pale imitation of Home Alone, and demand to see Toy Story instead.
"CutThroat Island" (12) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
Choosing her recent roles even more unwisely than Steve Martin, Geena Davis follows Accidental Hero, Angie and Speechless and hits the nadir in her career with Cut Throat Island, a meandering 17th century swashbuckling yarn dominated by explosions, storms and acrobatics very obviously performed by stuntpersons. Davis plays a rum swilling, cliche spouting pirate who buys a slave (Matthew Modine) to help her locate hidden treasure.
Modine's role was originally to be played by Michael Douglas, but when Davis's husband, action movie specialist Renny Harlin came on board as her director, her role was beefed up and his diminished so much that he quit and the role was turned down by, among others, Liam Neeson, Keanu Reeves and Ralph Fiennes. Given Davis's height, all small action heroes had to be passed over and Modine was cast finally, presumably because he's over six feet tall. He's entirely ill at ease in this rambling, tiresome movie which wilt only go into the history books as the $92 million fiasco which brought down its production company, Carolco.
"Balto" (PG) Savoy, Virgin, Dublin
Puppy love breaks out in Alaska in this beautifully animated action adventure, which tells the true story of Balto, the half wolf, half husky whose bravery saves a small Alaskan village from an epidemic of diptheria in the 1920s. To impress the object of his affections, Batto braves blizzards, avalanches and hostility from all the thoroughbred dogs before returning triumphant, vital medicines in tow.
The voices of Bob Hoskins, Bridget Fonda, Kevin Bacon and Phil Collins feature in this endearing, undeniably soppy but often exciting story, directed by Simon Wells with inventive twists and lots of humour, some of which will be well over the heads of its young target audience but which will keep their adult friends amused.
"Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace" (12) Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
If Dunston Checks In fares badly in comparison with Toy Story, Lawnmower Man 2, the main selling point of which is special effects, is comprehensively humiliated by the Disney film. Carefully tailored for the right certificate for its target audience, this sequel replaces one moderately successful Irish star (Pierce Brosnan) with another (Patrick Bergin). Bergin plays a reclusive scientist who assists young hacker Austin O Brien in combating the plans of the super intelligent Jobe (Matt Frewer) to conquer cyberspace and therefore rule the world. The original film wasn't particularly original, but at least boasted some striking images. The sequel is desperately unimaginative and the visual thrills will fail to impress most computer literate youngsters.
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