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BLOOM

Sean Walsh’s flawed but fun film is a serviceable adaptation of Ulysses. Of course, any director trying to shoot Joyce’s cosmic and microcosmic dramedy is at a disadvantage. Walsh solves the stream-of-consciousness problem semi-successfully by playing voiceovers over footage of Leopold Bloom (Stephen Rea, embodying the role perfectly) and Stephen Dedalus (Hugh O’Connor) as they peregrinate through Ireland’s capital. Quibblers will bewail the liberties taken with the text — some of them gratuitous and perplexing, like starting the film with the closing soliloquy murmured dreamily by Molly Bloom (Angeline Ball) and having her speak directly to the camera. Bloom also plays down major themes — Leopold Bloom’s Jewishness, Molly’s infidelity — whose exploration might open the movie up to a general audience. And some chapters are omitted ("Sirens") or dealt with in a single scene ("Aeolus"). But the hallucinatory nightmare of "Circe" is all the outlandish fun it should be, allowing Rea to strut his slapstick stuff as he morphs from character to character. And the book’s everyman stuff is all there: Stephen pissing on the strand, Buck Mulligan waving his snotrag, Blazes Boylan taking Molly furiously from behind, and, of course, Bloom camped in the outhouse with his tattered copy of Titbits, an image punctuated with a plangent plopping sound. (113 minutes)

BY MIKE MILIARD

Issue Date: October 15 - 21, 2004
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