A Greek-American filmmaker, known simply as «A», returns to his home town in northern Greece for a screening of his latest controversial film. His real reason for coming back, however, is to track down three long-missing reels of film by Greece’s pioneering Manakis brothers who in the early years of cinema travelled through the Balkans, ignoring national and ethnic strife and recording ordinary people, especially craftsmen, on film. Their images, he believes, hold the key to lost innocence and essential truth, to an understanding of Balkan history Thus he embarks on a search that takes him across the war-torn Balkans, a landscape of spectral figures and broken dreams, right to the heart of darkness: a damaged film archive in Sarajevo where his quest ends. Like a latter-day Ulysses he finds his «Ithaca», the missing, undeveloped film and is at last united with the work of the Manakis brothers… his gaze communes with theirs and another journey begins. —theoangelopoulos.com
Theo Angelopoulos began to study law in Athens but broke up his studies to go to the Sorbonne in Paris in order to study literature. When he had finished his studies, he wanted to attend the School of Cinema at Paris but decided instead to go back to Greece. There he worked as a journalist and critic for the newspaper “Demokratiki Allaghi” until it was banned by the military after a coup d’état. Now unemployed, he decided to make his first movie, Anaparastasi (1970). Internationally successful was his trilogy about the history of Greece from 1930 to 1970 consisting of Meres tou ’36 (1972), O thiasos (1975), and Oi kynigoi (1977). After the end of the dictatorship in Greece, Angelopoulos went to Italy, where he worked with RAI (and more money). His movies then became less political. —IMDb
Una historia muy triste, pero hermosa a la vez. Es, como en la Odisea, un viaje rumbo al hogar, de manera mas introspectiva, pero con un objetivo que parece que lo vale, pero que al final no deja de ser una vanidad del hombre. Gran actuación de Harvey Keitel. Es un viaje de descubrimiento, una narrativa fuera de lo convencional, pero muy efectiva, Un gran monologo final, es una conclusión excelente.
from the "ulysses staring contest" forum with some additional info: I think the film being at 3 hours, should have had a more complete ending than the one in this film. It’s just Harvey Keitel in front of a blank screen having unsuccessfully completing his mission. however I thought the film itself was well done, with nice European scenery and Keitel, and Erland Josephson gave great performances.(4/5)
Ulysses' Gaze: a three hour panorama of a fragment of the 20th century's soul. Ironically, it wasn't long enough.
Primarily remembered for his work with Bergman and Tarkovsky, Josephson was also a director himself as well as a novelist and playwright.
His career spanned four decades and, in 1998, he won the Palme d’Or for Eternity and a Day.
