The Gaze of Ulysses is one of the most important masterpieces of Theo Angelopoulos, the father of Greek cinema, and the most obscure, deep and magnificent of all his works. I can't describe the shock and surprise when I first saw this movie, the scenes and lines in it have been haunting my mind for a long time, constantly emerging, like a source of imagination, which contains countless inspired images and inspirations.
Looking for lost beauty
The Gaze of Ulysses, also known as The Journey of Ulysses' Life, is based on a director searching for three lost films. The three films are early images taken by the Manaki brothers, the earliest filmmakers in the Balkans, and they are the prototype and mother of Greek cinema. Like the early Greek film The Weaver, which was inserted at the beginning of the film, it was a sign of the era of the birth of cinema. Now, more than a hundred years later, movies have advanced by leaps and bounds. However, in the eyes of the director, the film deviates from the original beauty, the simple and pure image that points directly to the heart, and the film gradually deteriorates into a fancy and empty image. To trace three lost volumes of ancient film is to pursue the original source of the film. That's the purpose of the journey, not so much a journey as a spiritual experience and return.
The original film is the original beauty of the film, and the protagonist director is also in the chaos of this modern world, to find the original beauty of the film and creative inspiration. On the train, the protagonist once confided his true feelings in his heart: he was caught in the dilemma of creation, and the lost film, although simple, was the most rustic root of the film, and to find them was also the protagonist, or Anzhe's own most simple pursuit of film and beauty. It is also a deep gaze at this era.
A journey across time, space, history, and borders
The content of the whole movie is that the protagonist steps on the Balkan land for the film and begins a long search.
Spatially, his journey spans the entire Balkan Peninsula, from Greece, to Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, the Black Sea, the Danube, and ultimately to Sarajevo. Throughout the journey, the sights and feelings along the way are the epitome of the bitter and heavy history of the entire Balkan Peninsula. To talk about this film, you must first sort out the past and present lives of that area in the context of the whole film.
The entire Balkan Peninsula, originally a part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, is located at the junction of Asia and Europe, and has been a place of multi-ethnic and multi-cultural convergence since ancient times. However, this is not a peaceful fusion, but a frontier of war and conflict, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Islam... Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians... When the Ottomans gradually decayed and disintegrated, the small peoples of these regions became independent, established their own nation-states, and then began to fight each other. After the rise of communism, many of the countries here became communist countries, and after World War II, the Iron Curtain of the Cold War fell, isolating Greece and its red neighbors. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia fell into civil strife, the three peoples began to fight each other independently, the "Bosnian War" broke out, NATO began bombing, and it was at this time that Ulysses's life journey began. A journey through space, along the way of the dilapidated countryside, the desolate cities, the icy ruins, the hazy morning light and the sunset. All show the traces left behind by the development of this historical trajectory, and the fragments of time and memory that are constantly interspersed are inserted and crossed, and the tragic history of the past is reflected in this journey, such as the moment of encountering red communism, such as the family banquet of embracing the mother 50 years ago.
This is the meaning of the broadest and grandest journey - the spatial geographical crossing, feeling the sadness and heaviness of national history.
In terms of time, space is intertwined. In the course of the realistic journey, the director also deliberately inserted many past pictures, adding historical memories, so that the protagonist directly entered history and memory. He saw Manaki die in the bay 50 years ago, was taken away by the Communist Party at the train transfer station, and hugged his mother in his memory 50 years ago... These fragments, large or small, are the memories and histories of this nation and the director and even the protagonist. The vertical flow of man's destiny, the fate of the country, life and history, and the fusion of man and history is the journey of life.
In the sense, it is what was said before, An Zhe borrowed the mouth of the protagonist director in the film, said the despair and loss of film creation in this era, to find the original beauty, is to defend the most simple original value of art. The protagonist is indeed in this search, from despair to slowly find hope, find inspiration, but also rekindled the yearning of life and the courage to love.
Finally, the understanding of "Ulysses" is the metaphorical background of a myth in the film. Anzhe's films are always inseparable from the journey, and they are inseparable from the ancient hints of mythology. "Ulysses" is a hint at the "Odysseus" in the ancient "Homeric Epic", Odysseus's journey back home, was repeatedly adapted to Anzhe's films, Odysseus returned to his hometown for ten years, this "root" missing tragedy and rich nostalgia, has become a true sketch of the psychology of people in the Balkans. The protagonist once carried an old woman back to her hometown for a long time, and when the old lady got off the car, Xiao Suo's desolate city was no longer what it remembered. The contrast between that pale city and the old woman in black is stark, she represents most of the ordinary people who have been displaced in the turmoil, who have long lost their hometown in the war, and returned by chance, but found that they have long become outsiders, strangers, because the roots of their hometown have been broken.
The meaning of the multi-layered journey overlaps and forms the rich dimension of cinema: it is the inquiry of the evolution of cinema since its birth; it is the history and past of the Balkans and Greece; it is the director's personal search for inspiration and the sublimation of the soul to get rid of the crisis. In the end, it all converges on Sarajevo in reality, drawing a heavy rest in the smoke of killing and war. This grand structure and complex rhetoric require a broad mind and superb skill, and in less than three hours, many elements are mixed, and I am afraid that it is difficult for anyone to compare with it.
Travelers of time and memory
Perhaps this is the most time-handling method I have appreciated since "Love in Hiroshima". Unlike the nonlinear structure of time, which is no longer new today, The Gaze of Ulysses retains the linear passage of time, but makes it mysterious and symbolic.
Bay: The scene of the bay at the beginning of the film really elevates the opening of the whole film to an extraordinary atmosphere. In the winter of 1954, Manaki and his assistant were photographing by the sea as a boat slowly sailed along the distant sea. The aging director finally collapses under the weight of life, this is the camera slowly moving, we see the protagonist of 1995, he also stands in the same place, encountered this scene from 50 years ago. When the camera turns back again, both Manaki and his assistant are gone, but the slowly moving ship on the surface of the sea tells us that the two time and space have met here. A long shot that connects two time and space of 40 years brings an experience that is difficult to tell. Two different times meet at the same point in time, where the subjective and objective passage of time is meaningless, it becomes a time in which the past and the present proceed simultaneously, which is the crystallization of time, this is eternity. Time has not passed again, but the eternal memory has been preserved in its entirety, and perhaps, this is what makes us share the enduring charm of that art, the shooting of Manaki and our viewing.
Black Room: During a journey on the railway, the protagonist is suddenly taken to a black room by a group of 50-year-old gendarmes, and a man holds a verdict in his hand and pronounces a series of charges against him. This is actually the protagonist's journey to share memories of Manaki's early encounters. This is not the same as the previous story of encounters at different points in time, which is a kind of intervention of reality in memory. Through this intervention, through the protagonist, we personally feel the bitterness and hardship of a director born for art in the chaotic world, and the horror of that era.
Family Dance: Time and memory meet in the passages of the family dance. The director finally meets his former mother and returns to his former home. The family began to hold a dance party. A long shot, a ball, "Congratulations 1945!" "Congratulations to 1948!" "Congratulations to 1950!" Cheers happen one after another. The protagonist here is not only back in his own memory, but also an encounter with different latitudes of time. The two techniques in the bay and in the black room meet here. Through such a dance party that travels through time and space in memory, through the change of the protagonist's family, we see the epitome of history. Among them, the father returned home, and the people's committee members searched the house, all of which happened to Anzhe himself in his childhood. This dance is also of a strong autobiographical nature.
After World War II, Romania was a turbulent conflict, with joys and sorrows, and people living optimistically and strongly in the midst of suffering. A 20-minute long shot is consistent to the end, and the various tastes in it can only be experienced by yourself. This scene is also one of the most commendable places in the whole film.
Lenin in the distance: the back of the changing times
The scene that fascinates me the most is watching the broken statue of Lenin on the Banks of the Danube being dismembered and transported away. This scene was later borrowed from the more widely circulated "Goodbye Lenin". The statue of Lenin, which once represented the highest faith and ideal in the land of communism, had only the fate of dismemberment after the illusion of communism was shattered. God-like spiritual leaders can now only be carried away by mechanical lifting. What a great irony. The portrait of Lenin under the steel line silently gazes at the small and humble people on the earth, and this scene is intriguing. Like the giant broken hand in Landscape in the Mist, Lenin was taken away by a ship (not an airplane), his eyes looking into the distance, pointing to the sky, what was he trying to say?
Although man is the writer and creator of history, he is extremely small and humble, and sometimes he is simply powerless to change the fate of the times and the trajectory of history, and can only passively accept it. The Ottomans have come, the Christians have come, the fascists have come, the Communists have come... This is the bitter past of this land, Lenin is slowly transported away, like a huge corpse, this is a funeral of the collapse of the times, the people on the shore look at all this solemnly, farewell and burial another era of disillusionment.
Sarajevo in the fog
When he came to Sarajevo after experiencing many threats and risking his life, in the basement of the defender of the film, after thousands of efforts to fail, he finally got the three rolls of film of the original film, his soul was sublimated, and the individual was purified. It was this steadfastness in his faith that saved his heart.
However, the sublimation of the individual was not used in this era. The old man's family is still inevitably killed, Sarajevo is still in the midst of war, the world is still deteriorating, this is helpless. The massacre in the fog was thrilling, life could not be seen in the confused fog, and in the long white screen, we could only hear gunshots and screams in the distance. Then there are corpses all over the place. This unique treatment brings a more intense and lasting psychological impact, which is an imaginary horror rather than a low-level visual one. Anzhe said: "Sarajevo's present is the most important". Admittedly, when the protagonist finally sits in the darkness, reciting Homer's Epic with sad eyes, it is still war-torn outside. We found film at great cost – both the beginning and the end of the story. In the ruins of this ruined world, there are still people who are holding fast to their faith and their original beauty, just like the three rolls of film, and perhaps the beautiful things are only temporarily obscured, but they must be eternal, even if it is only a trickle, it can also warm people's hearts.