Synopsis
Ulysses' Gaze (To vlemma tou Odyssea, 1995) is Theo Angelopoulos's meditative epic, ready to watch online on iFILM. Harvey Keitel plays a Greek-born director who comes home after 35 years abroad and almost at once sets off again, this time across the Balkans.
What he is chasing: three undeveloped reels by the Manaki brothers, possibly the earliest film ever shot in this part of the world. The hunt carries him through Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania and a Sarajevo under siege. Every border he crosses is also a slip backward in time — civil war, fallen regimes, empty stations under falling snow. Angelopoulos lets past and present share a single unbroken shot, and his long takes run for minutes on end. The women the traveller meets, all played by Maia Morgenstern, feel like one face echoing across decades.
The film took the Grand Prix at Cannes and was made by hands from six countries. It asks for patience and pays it back: three hours where the birth of cinema folds into the wounds of a fractured region. Fast cutting fans will struggle here. Everyone else gets one of the high points of European art cinema. Stream Ulysses' Gaze (1995) online on iFILM.
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