That old adage about the best intentions going wrong fits as well with movies as anything else.
Take, for example, "Ulysses' Gaze," Greek director Theo Angelopoulos' look at Balkan history. While it's beautiful, even graceful, and though its heart is in the right place, there's just as much to condemn as there is in its favor.
Maybe it's the pseudo-mythological presentation. Perhaps it's the portentous, almost hilarious, dialogue. Or it could be the daunting three-hour running time (almost one-third of the film could be trimmed out with little effect). For whichever reason, "Ulysses' Gaze" is more like an overstuffed and ultimately unsatisfying pastry than it is a fulfilling film epic.
In it, Angelopoulos gives things a somewhat Homerian air, as A. (Harvey Keitel), an obsessive Greek filmmaker, searches for three long-lost reels of undeveloped documentary film.
Beginning his search in a tiny Balkan village, A. hunts in vain through Albania, Romania and parts of the former Yugoslavia, reliving his past and that of the legendary Manakia brothers, who shot the fabled footage.
Eventually, his journey takes him to war-torn Sarajevo, where an equally obsessive film archivist, Ivo Levy (Erland Josephson), has acquired the reels and been attempting in vain to develop the rare stock.
Through Ivo and and through Sarajevo survivors, A. sees where the eventual Balkan strife may lead, as religious and racial factions fight to the death over inconsequential differences.
In that final third, the film finally becomes interesting. But it's much too little too late, as Angelopoulos has already damaged the flow with too many talky, discursive looks into the pasts of both A. and the Manakia brothers (the sequence with A. remembering his family, in particular, goes on way too long).
As mentioned, the script (which was co-written by Angelopoulos and two others) gives the situations a myth-like air — such as the appearance of the "Wives," three women who share an emotional link with A. (all played by Maia Morgenstern) — that actually detract from the serious subject matter and make later tragic events ring falsely.
And some interesting characters, such as A.'s journalist friend in Romania, a taxi driver and an older woman with whom he shares a taxi ride, are dropped from the storyline swiftly (well, as swiftly as the snail's pacing will allow) and without regard to dramatic flow.
Angelopoulos does a good job at capturing some poetic-looking scenes, although he does linger far too long in many instances. The performances are also fine, especially Josephson (who stepped into the role when Gian Maria Volonte died during production) and Keitel, who manages to look solemn while speaking some truly corny lines.
"Ulysses' Gaze" is not rated but would probably receive an R for nudity, including brief full frontal shots of Keitel, violence, all of it heard but not seen, and two off-screen sexual encounters.