巧得很，同時下了六七部西奧?安哲羅普羅斯的電影，卻按著拍攝的先后順序連接看了《霧中風(fēng)景》和《尤里西斯的凝視》，因此在看完之后，不可能不注意到這兩部電影的相似之處。兩部電影運用了很多相似的意像，卻又煥發(fā)著不同的光彩——
    最應(yīng)該指出的相似當(dāng)然是主題。兩部電影同樣以“尋找”為主題， 所以“旅行”理所當(dāng)然地成為“尋找”的形式。而尋找的目標(biāo)，卻多少有點不可言傳，可以理解為一種“純真”（《霧中風(fēng)景》），一種“根源”（《尤里西斯的凝視》），因而兩部電影的主人公都帶著某種回歸本源的“思鄉(xiāng)病”（《尤里西斯的凝視》中說的“homesick”）。不同之處在于，在《霧中風(fēng)景》里，導(dǎo)演側(cè)重于個人，“父親”成為兩個孩子尋找目標(biāo)的世俗化象征；而在更加側(cè)重于歷史的《尤里西斯的凝視》中，導(dǎo)演將“尋根”的目光投向了曾經(jīng)統(tǒng)一的整個巴爾干半島（西奧用同一個演員演三個地方的女人，詮釋了這一聯(lián)系），因此那三卷記膠片就變得格外重要——對于那段發(fā)生了卻不被人銘記的歷史，那三卷記錄了卻無法顯影的膠片成了它恰如其分的象征。有趣之處還在于，導(dǎo)演將男主角設(shè)定為導(dǎo)演，而讓他去尋找另一位拍攝者的膠片，在這里，個人與歷史，歷史與現(xiàn)實，充分緊密地聯(lián)系起來。
    另一個引人注意之處在于兩部電影中出現(xiàn)的被吊起的巨大雕像。不論是《霧中風(fēng)景》里古代雕像的手臂，還是《尤里西斯的凝視》中的列寧，它們被吊起的鏡頭都帶著超現(xiàn)實主義美感，充滿寓意。而雕像題材的選擇，則成為電影主題的重申——在我看來，手臂似乎指向古希臘，而列寧雕像意味著巴爾干的近現(xiàn)代史。
    “霧”在兩部電影中都可以視作“生活”的象征。在《霧中風(fēng)景》里，主人公正是致力于撥開生活的大霧，找到精神家園。這使得“霧”帶上了一種哀而不怨的氛圍?？墒窃凇队壤镂魉沟哪暋防?，只有大霧出現(xiàn)，被戰(zhàn)爭中斷的生活才能繼續(xù)，這時“霧”反而帶上了一種歡樂的氣氛。
    最后一點相似在于導(dǎo)演對暴行的處理。在導(dǎo)演凝視的鏡頭前，暴行被一些景物所遮擋（《霧中風(fēng)景》里的卡車和《尤里西斯的凝視》里的霧），卻反而顯得格外殘暴，讓人心悸。
    說了這么多形式上的東西，究竟他們找到了什么？對此我不敢妄言。在《霧中風(fēng)景》中，西奧溫情地讓兩個孩子找到了那棵橄欖樹，可是在《尤里西斯的凝視》里，那三卷膠片最后卻仍然無法顯影，那個男人眼含熱淚說道：
    當(dāng)我們一步步向夢境里靠近
　　在每個擁抱之間
　　在每個愛的呼喚之間
　　我會告訴你那旅程
　　用盡整晚的時間
　　連同所有即將到來的夜晚
　　在每個擁抱之間
　　在每個愛的呼喚之間
    將人的所有旅行
    這個沒有結(jié)局的故事訴說下去

"And, if the soul is about to know itself, it must gaze into the soul."
正如開頭引用的柏拉圖的話語。人生就是不斷地自我解剖，自我舍棄，再組裝。

“巴爾干戰(zhàn)爭指的是1912年到1913年期間在南歐巴爾干半島上前后發(fā)生的第一次巴爾干戰(zhàn)爭和第二次巴爾干戰(zhàn)爭。第一次巴爾干戰(zhàn)爭（1912年10月－1913年5月）的對戰(zhàn)雙方是巴爾干同盟諸國（希臘、保加利亞、黑山、塞爾維亞）與鄂圖曼土耳其帝國。結(jié)果鄂圖曼土耳其帝國戰(zhàn)敗，其在巴爾干半島上的土地除伊斯坦布爾附近的一小塊之外，全部割讓給同盟四國，同時阿爾巴尼亞獨立。其后由于戰(zhàn)后利益分配上的問題，又很快爆發(fā)了第二次巴爾干戰(zhàn)爭（1913年6月－8月），這次的交戰(zhàn)雙方分別是希臘、塞爾維亞、羅馬尼亞、土耳其和保加利亞。結(jié)果保加利亞戰(zhàn)敗，簽訂布加勒斯特條約，保加利亞割讓了大片土地。

塞爾維亞經(jīng)過這次戰(zhàn)爭，變得更加強大；這引起奧匈帝國的不安，兩國間的敵視成為后來第一次世界大戰(zhàn)的導(dǎo)火線。保加利亞由于被巴爾干鄰國擊敗，因而轉(zhuǎn)向復(fù)仇主義，第一次世界大戰(zhàn)時加入同盟國（因塞爾維亞、希臘、羅馬尼亞皆為協(xié)約國成員），尋求恢復(fù)大保加利亞的光榮?！?br>
這就是影片的大背景，全片輾轉(zhuǎn)整個巴爾干半島。希臘、阿爾巴尼亞、馬其頓、保加利亞、羅馬尼亞、塞爾維亞、波黑。而這個gaze也正是對整個巴爾干半島的繼manakis兄弟后的又一次凝視。

對尤利西斯唯一的認識就是“意識流”，而本片也是看過的安哲的片子里最迷離的一部了，時而自己時而穿越過去時而進入他人的生活，但轉(zhuǎn)接卻恰到好處，充滿著喜劇效果，特別是同年時代在羅馬尼亞國內(nèi)的那幕，一個長鏡頭從1945到1948到1950，眼睜睜地看著父親的歸來，叔叔的被捕，和沒收委員會的到來，最后一張照片，隨后家族分崩離析。滿眼紅色的羅馬尼亞，士兵們歌唱著喀秋莎，踏上戰(zhàn)場，人們舉著革命必將勝利的橫幅游行，而所謂資產(chǎn)階級的家中，卻是處于一片恐怖的氛圍中。再到離開時肢解的列寧，長鏡頭的人們追逐著駁船劃十字架，對的是什么，錯了的又是什么？

邊檢時化身成了Yannakis，被流放的命運似乎竟是落在男主身上般感同身受。"The first thing God created was the journey. And then came doubt... and nostalgia..."

他們在討論塞爾維亞人和阿爾巴尼亞人誰先來到巴爾干半島。最后的結(jié)論卻是都怪該死的黑格爾影響了馬克思。想想鸛鳥的踟躇里作者的發(fā)文，“By which cues could we spark a new collective dream?”人類的歷史就是這樣前進，也因此，manakis兄弟的凝視才顯得如此與眾不同，一見傾心。

不過比起第一遍看更傾心的是一段影片沒有交代，但卻可以旁敲側(cè)擊推敲出來的男主的故事。

三十多年前的希臘，男主在軍隊中，每個星期六離開時，hoping for a sign in the eyes of the local girls. But they just laughed and passed on. There, they laugh and pass on. But not always.

-"Will you wait for me?"

-"Is it wrong not to love the city where you were born? But this place stifles me. Rain and mud in winter, dust in summer."

-"I'll be back to take you away from here. I can hear my train coming in."

-"Stay a little longer. Only a few minutes."

-"I can hear the train. I must hurry."

-“Tell me that you care, that you will come back. I will be waiting.”

從此似乎眼中的每一個人都變成了她的模樣——可以參考《鸛鳥的踟躇》里的妹子所經(jīng)歷的。另一點，可以想見《鸛鳥》的男主隨后會踏上的道理。重點不在誰負誰，重點在于男主們一個個瞎了。本片可以說是為了逃避那個她而一頭扎入三卷膠片的坑，而《永恒》則是為了坑而放棄了一切。某種程度上來說，入坑相對來說是容易的，因為一旦認真便可以暫時地忘卻一切。但終究要還的。

無論是IMDB上號稱是在唱庫爾德民歌的妹子讓他穿上死去的丈夫的衣服，還是老頭的女兒對他說好像很久以前就認識他。只能說都瞎了。或者說，選擇不去看。而換句話說，男主何嘗不是呢，他只是選擇了蒙蔽雙眼，但最后，那三卷膠片的含義，則是他終于敢于去正視他自己了。

“When I return, it will be with another man's clothes. Another man's name. My coming will be unexpected. If you look at me, unbelieving and say,'You are not here.' I will show you signs and you will believe me. I will tell you about the lemon tree in your garden. The cool window that lets in the moonlight. And then signs of the body. Signs of love. And as we climb, trembling to our old room, between one embrace and the next, between lovers' calls, I will tell you about the journey... all the night long. And then all the nights to come, between one embrace and the next, between lovers' calls. The whole human adventure. The story that never ends.”

一開始是"A way out"，但最后短暫的逃避解決不了任何問題，直面它，成為它。從這個角度上來看，倒是的確《鸛鳥》的內(nèi)涵和篇幅明顯相形見絀了。

-“I'm crying because I... Because I can't love you.”

Because it is a noble epic set amid the ruins of the Russian empire and the genocide of what was Yugoslavia, there is a temptation to give ``Ulysses' Gaze'' the benefit of the doubt: To praise it for its vision, its daring, its courage, its great length. But I would not be able to look you in the eye if you went to see it, because how could I deny that it is a numbing bore? A director must be very sure of his greatness to inflict an experience like this on the audience, and Theo Angelopoulos was so sure that when he only won the Special Jury Prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, he made his displeasure obvious on the stage. He thought he should have won the Palme d'Or, which went instead to ``Underground,'' by Emir Kusturica, which also was three hours long and also set in the wreckage of Yugoslavia, but had at least the virtue of not being almost unendurable.

``Ulysses' Gaze'' stars Harvey Keitel as a Greek movie director named ``A,'' who returns to his roots 35 years after leaving for America. He seeks, he says, some rare old film footage: The first film ever shot in the Balkans. His odyssey (for so we must describe any journey in a movie with ``Ulysses'' in the title) takes him by taxi from Greece to the Albanian border, and then by boat to the cities of Skopje to Bucharest to Sarajevo. (``Is this Sarajevo?'' he asks at one point. If you have to ask, you're in the wrong place.) Along the way there are flashbacks to 1945 and 1946, when as a friend in Belgrade tells him, ``We fell asleep in one world and were rudely awakened in another.'' You might be tempted to wonder why old film footage would be so important to ``A'' that he would risk his life traveling unprotected through a war zone to find it. Since Angelopoulos in fact directed this movie about such a man, and filmed it in the very same war zones, he would probably not be the man to ask.

The initial ``A'' undoubtedly stands for Angelopoulos, but why he chose Harvey Keitel to portray him is a mystery. Keitel is a great spontaneous actor, able to think on his feet and move around quickly in dialect, and here he acts as if someone has injected him with crazy glue. He's slow, measured, portentous, tedious, and his dialogue sounds like readings from an editorial translated imperfectly through several languages.

There are several women in the movie (the credits call them ``Ulysses' Wives''), and they find themselves powerfully attracted to ``A,'' a mystery only partly explained by the fact that they are all played by the same actress, Maia Morgenstern. They see him, he sees them, and soon the two of them are looking greatly pained. I was reminded of Armando Bo's anguished 1960s Argentinian soft-core sex films, which starred his wife Isabel Sarli, whose agony was terrible to behold and could only be slaked in the arms of a man. ``A'' and the women make love in this movie as if trying to apply unguent inside each other's clothes.

There are some remarkable images. They are spaced throughout the film at roughly 20 minute intervals. One shows a thin line of police separating demonstrators with torches, and other people with umbrellas. When the torch-bearers press forward, the umbrellas undulate backward, in a scene reminiscent of the umbrella scene in Hitchcock's ``Foreign Correspondent.'' Similar crowds with umbrellas stand in squares, and in fields, and along the banks of rivers. One wonders if the umbrellas are important to the shots, or if the extras demanded them.

Another big image involves a huge statue of Lenin, which has been disassembled and placed aboard a barge. (For shipment. . . where? Where is there a demand for used Lenin statues these days?) The vast stone head looks forward, and Lenin's giant finger points the way, as ``A'' travels on the same barge. The image is so powerful that even its banality cannot diminish it.

The closing passages of the film have an immediacy; they're set in the middle of a war zone, and characters important to ``A'' are endangered. But one can easily think of much better films also shot under wartime conditions, particularly ``Circle of Deceit,'' shot by Volker Schlondorff during the fighting in Beirut, or Milcho Manchevski's ``Before the Rain,'' shot near the fighting in Yugoslavia.

What's left after ``Ulysses' Gaze'' is the impression of a film made by a director so impressed with the gravity and importance of his theme that he wants to weed out any moviegoers seeking interest, grace, humor or involvement. One cannot easily imagine anyone else speaking up at a dinner table where he presides.

It is an old fact about the cinema--known perhaps even to those pioneers who made the ancient footage ``A'' is seeking--that a film does not exist unless there is an audience between the projector and the screen. A director, having chosen to work in a mass medium, has a certain duty to that audience. I do not ask that he make it laugh or cry, or even that he entertain it, but he must at least not insult its good will by giving it so little to repay its patience. What arrogance and self-importance this film reveals.