matteo-pittoni-621-331559 Yes it's true that maybe it has a History Channel feeling, a music that may sound crappy, and so on, but it's just ...genius. How much of this film is a director's choice? We don't know. We can't. Everything is so perfect, the necessary cut-off choices so well-made... How can't you just *love* it? Every single actor of this film is perfect, and Angeline Ball's Molly Bloom is special. Her final monologue is rendered though a true theatrical mastery. Stephen Rea's Bloom too is incredible. Hugh O'Conor shows us what does it means to be twenty-two and to be called Dedalus. His interior monologues are perfect too. All monologues and dialogues are perfect. A special attention has been delivered to the sound of the voice. The sound is very important in this film. All the technical choices show a director that tries to be incredibly ambitious, and humble, at the same time. And for me, it's a huge success.

Cosmoeticadotcom Bloom is an Irish film of the James Joyce novel Ulysses by director Sean Walsh. Let me be up front- I think Ulysses is a vastly overrated book, with moments of superbness and many more moments of wretchedness. It was Joyce, Woolf, and their ilk that started a good deal of art down the road to narcissistic hermeticism. That all said, while the film Bloom is not a great film, in and of itself, it is a good film, with moments of brilliance, and does a far better job at explicating the events of the first Bloomsday, June 16th, 1904, than the book ever has, despite what pretentious critics say.Basically, nothing much happens on that day, yet three main characters- a married couple, Leopold (Stephen Rea) and Molly Bloom (Angeline Ball), and an aspiring artist and scholar named Stephen Dedalus (Hugh O'Conor)- protagonist of Joyce's earlier A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man. The three perambulate about the world of Dublin on that day, meeting and missing each other on several occasions. Dedalus is trammeled by his own inadequacies, and rebelling against the established order, while the Blooms deal with the slow death of their marriage, precipitated by the untimely death of their son, and aided by Molly's flagrant infidelities. Yet, the book takes these circumstances and subordinates them to the intellect, in the conceit of 'stream of consciousness' writing, which is basically unpunctuated interior dialogue. Of course, the thing about stream of consciousness is that it is really the conceit, not the real way people think, lest punctuation would never have gotten started. Think of how often your thoughts veer and back up, U-turn and screech to a halt. The mind is certainly not like a river, but more like a potholed city street.The film, however, does not suffer from these limitations. The visual image can work on multiple levels with far more immediacy than the word, so the 'day' of the book can be easily condensed. Some Joyceans will complain that the film takes things out of order, and mixes many of the chapters together, yet a) this is a film, not a book, and b) that is akin to deriding those who deride Joyce's approach in the book (regardless of whether or not he succeeds- I vote nay), as well as being the height of hypocrisy. There are marvelous images, and truly the cinematography is the best thing in the film. Rea is also great as Leopold Bloom, while ball and O'Conor also have moments of brilliance- including Molly Bloom's closing soliloquy- the last chapter in the book- which the filmmaker wisely opens and closes the film with, so that Molly is indelibly stamped in the viewer's mind while most of the rest of the film explores Leopold and Dedalus…. Almost all of the flaws in the film are carryover flaws from the novel. Film, in fact, would seem to be a medium that Joyce was born to indulge in. Had he been born thirty or so years later I think he may have become the first great screenwriter, and may never have dabbled in novels. Film is far closer to poetry than prose, and Joyce's prose certainly is among the closest published skirts near poetry. Instead of 'not doing justice' to the book the film really makes the book far more relevant to readers- hardcore or casual. Its only flaws, outside of the book's, is that it could have been a bit more daring. I mean, if Ulysses is rent of nudity, just how avant garde can it be?Overall, I recommend this film on its own right, and as sort of a Cliff's Notes to the book, especially considering the excellent director's commentary. But, it's a so-so book to begin with, so take the former notation in that light. Yes?

kristenrobertson 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.

nexus_marine Just saw it at the Seattle International Film Festival. I haven't read Ulysses (but I will). My wife read it 40 years ago. We both liked Bloom very much. Molly Bloom was great, as was all the acting. This is not a film for car chase buffs, but if you feel like a pleasant day in Dublin, and are not put off by sexual references, it's just the thing. We did not find it difficult to comprehend and the accent is quite intelligible.There is a voice-over track which gives one a good feel for Joyce's language. It's great fun to watch the characters drift in and out of fantasies and memories. I don't at all think that one needs to have read Ulysses to have this film be enjoyable.