Ulysses,
however, might prove more daunting to the beach-blanket reader than
the filmmakers seem to suggest, and this is but one of a number of
serious flaws in what could have been a first-rate introduction to
“the great novel no one has read.” Adelson and Laverna, in fact,
open their film with a sequence of interview snippets in which an
array of average sorts admit that they've never read it, or that they
have never heard of it, or the slender, half-blind genius who wrote
it.
Where
In Bed With
Ulysses
succeeds is in the marvelous evocation of Dublin in 1904, and the
maelstrom of Joyce's untidy life surrounding the book's creation.
Ulysses
takes place within the span of a single day, June 16, 1904, a date
which Joyce fetishists celebrate as “Bloomsday.” Through rare
film footage, still photographs, historical documents and
contemporary interviews, Adelson and Laverna create a palpable
tableau that conveys the visual and experiential sense of what Joyce
dubbed (in the “Aeolus” chapter of Ulysses)
“the heart of Hibernian metropolis,” just after the turn of the
century.
Adelson has chosen to narrate his own script, which may not have been
the most felicitous decision. His speech is curiously slow, his voice
adenoidal, and his statements often leadenly obvious. Filming on top
of the Martello tower, for instance, wherein the novel opens (and
where Joyce himself bunked for a few brief but significant days), all
Adelson can think to say is, “What a place to feel the gift and
wonder of literature!”
Adelson
also appears as a character from time to time, directing the
half-dozen Irish actors as they rehearse their reading of Joyce's
lively, allusive text, and paying a visit to the Rosenbach Museum and
Library in Philadelphia to view the bound volumes of what appears to
be the fair copy, in Joyce's own hand, from which the first
typescripts of Ulysses
were prepared. (“I was in awe!... You can almost see he loves what
he's writing.”)
Very
welcome is a bit from a filmed interview with Sylvia Beach,
proprietess of the legendary Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company,
who dared publish Joyce's book in its entirety in the face of
international disapprobation and censorship (copies of The
Little Review
that printed excerpts from Ulysses
were famously seized and burned wholesale). Recalling those heady
days in old age, Miss Beach is lively, intelligent and wry.
Likewise,
a visit to the Irish Jewish Center in Dublin proves enlightening, as
its curator Raphael Siev discusses the tiny Jewish population of
Ireland, and the climate of anti-Semitism active especially at the
time of the novel, noting the notorious sermons preached in 1903 by
Redemptorist Catholic priest Father John Creagh of Limerick, who
accused the Jews of shedding Christian blood. His venomous words
resulted in a boycott, often violent, of Jewish merchants, resulting
in an exodus of Jews from Ireland. The novel's central figure,
Leopold Bloom (whose interior monologue forms most of the book), is a
hereditary Jew who has converted to Christianity (prudently being
baptized in both the Protestant and Catholic faiths), but he still
experiences the slights and offenses of that bigotry.
The
“Cyclops” chapter of Ulysses
is where that anti-Semitism moves to center stage, and it is there
that the staged reading, mostly hammy and one-dimensional, comes to
life, as the actors inhabit the various Dublin denizens in Barney
Kiernan's tavern, including a rancid bigot known only as The Citizen,
whose rambling tirade about nationalism and race purity veers around
to Bloom's Jewish background. (“'What is your nation, if I may
ask,' says the citizen”...'Are you talking about the new
Jerusalem?'”)
One
wishes that more of the focus achieved here infused the rest of the
documentary. Various Joyce scholars and biographers offer not much
that is new or deeply insightful; sometimes they're just
wrong-headed. One expert expresses surprise that Joyce's wife Nora,
for instance, would stay with him in the face of his fantasies about
(and unsuccessful encouragements toward) cuckoldry and masochism,
overlooking the presence on Joyce's bookshelves a number of volumes
by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, including Venus
in Furs,
which plays a large role in Ulysses'
most freewheeling section, the famous “Circe” chapter, set in
Dublin's red-light district.
Nevertheless,
In
Bed With Ulysses
manages to redeem itself through its brilliant visual record, for
which co-director and editor Kate Taverna must be given the most
credit. She has edited 23 documentaries since 1981, including The
Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer
and Alan Adelson's only other documentary, Lodz
Ghetto
(1989), and her sure hand helps In
Bed With Ulysses
succeed where it might otherwise have floundered.
