"Joyce is pretty hot stuff!"
Added 10/11/2009
... to quote Sally Kellerman, Rodney Dangerfield's lit professor in "Back to School." Fionnula Flanagan's 1983 film is certainly entertaining, but is also an important piece of Joyce scholarship and interpretation. While I quarrel with her presentation of "Anna Livia Plurabelle" (instead of two gossipy washerwomen, one on each bank of the river, she's got three on the same side), her rendering of Molly Bloom is incomparable. Searingly lyrical and passionate, Flanagan reveals in the great hymn to earthly joy all of Molly's pent-up sorrow and anger at her husband's neglect. The complex, contradictory blend of emotions, all at white heat, is just as Joyce intended and sends us back to the pages of Ulysses with greater appreciation. Well done!
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Interesting
Added 6/8/2008
I had a bit of a thing for reading Joyce in the early nineties, (my mother is Joy, my father James, so I actually am "James-Joy's"!, my Irish surname appears in the Wake as well) This came on tv late one night so of course I stayed up and watched it. This review is therefore flawed by being based on long ago memory, however what I do remember is that the short excerpt from Finnegans Wake (from the Anna Livia Plurabelle section) and the monologue that closes Ulysses (done really well) were genuine highpoints, and the most "real" despite being on the face of it the hardest to put on film. The parts depicting Joyce in person seemed the least real and most stylised, perhaps this contrast was intentional but it didn't work for me in terms of sitting down to watch a movie. The way the film is divided into sections which didn't seem tightly knit together is asking to be seen as "good in parts" perhaps. Other women from Joyce's fiction and his life are portrayed, including Bloom's interaction at a distance on the beach. For someone with a particular interest in Joyce and curious to see the monologue and a short snatch from the Wake it is worth a look.
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Disappointing
Added 3/13/2005
This is pretty much a one-woman movie in that Fionnula Flanagan plays 7 different women in Joyce's life and works. The movie attempts to capture the essence of Joyce and his Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, and to a degree it does so, but that degree will depend on how much you're interested in them. It's very stagey because it's all talk, and after a while looks like something done for a lit class on Joyce rather than a general audience. The movie succeeds only where Joyce succeeded with these people/characters. It doesn't add up to a very good movie.
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JAMES JOYCE'S WOMEN
Added 1/9/2004
A superb, informative film. Strong performance by Fionnula Flanagan who portrays six women in the film. Beautifully done.
2 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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James Joyce's Women
Added 6/23/2000
This was a excellent, and often times interesting, portrayal of the Irish exile many have come to love (and hate) over the years. It is interesting here to see how he not only evolved as a man, but as an artist as well. Any true Joycean should and must see this!
4 out of 7 people found this helpful.
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