I was soaked in tears when watching Ulysses' Gaze this afternoon, especially in scenes when A (Harvey Keitel) was travelling through present and past, memories and imaginations, bliss and bitterness, longings and regrets - just like in Eternity and A Day. But those were not tears of sadness, rather tears of sublimation. The music and the images summoned up some unspeakable sentiments deep in my soul.
If Visconti could best depict the aristocratic elegance and decadent obsession in Proust's In Search of Lost Time - a project he didn't manage to complete during his lifetime, Angelopoulos is undoubtedly the one and only one, if not the last one - for I can't see any potential ones coming, that can best transcend onto screen Proust's loneliness, nostalgia, complexes, unmendable scars, lost regrets and of course all those streams of consciousness...
「沒有任何其他藝術形式比電影更能補捉時間的流逝，而又更能保留時間，讓它一回又一回地重覆自己。」
「安哲羅普洛斯......說：『人的肉身永遠都在日常瑣事中糾纏不清，而沉默的心靈則無言地編織思緒，直到一天，機緣巧合，隱秘的圖像浮現出來，水到渠成地糅合到現實生活的千絲萬縷裡去。』學者們可以花上洋洋萬言，從希臘的歷史、政治、文化、神話......，去解讀安哲羅普洛斯的電影，卻始終不若他自己寥寥數語來得來得精確清晰。其電影的藝術魅力，正正來自那些沉著恬靜、神秘詩意的影象——」
—黃愛玲
"You come all this way looking for something that's believed to be lost..."
—S (Erland Josephson), in Ulysses' Gaze
這一次重看《一生何求》（ Eternity and A Day ），我看到了一首詩，茫茫大地上的黑人兒，騎單車的黃衣人，古代的詩人，巴士上的情侶和音樂家，是詩的意象；海濱的漫步，小人蛇的淹連，戀人的婚禮，是詩的段落，戲裡人略顯遲緩的步伐，是詩的節奏。不要從抽象的字句中尋求可解的意義，因為那是詩的語言，召喚心靈與無意識的共鳴。年邁孤獨的詩人在回憶與想像中尋求解脫，那是一個完全封閉的世界，卻又無比開闊：在現實的流亡（雖然只是一天－－然而生命不也是一場顛沛的流亡？）中他闖進了女兒的生活，打斷了別人的慶典；在創造的回憶中他卻打破時、空，以至肉身的樊籬，圓滿了遺憾，重訪了故人。因此，就算盛載他大部份回憶的大屋將要易手，他亦可以撒手，因為他還有一片豐盛的精神家園。結尾，生命中最甜美的時光一一重臨，融匯成優美的終章，耳邊響起零碎的兒時印像，眼前卻是妻子的身影，也許是回憶中的現實，亦可以是夢裡的幻象，呀，是 Time Regained 。
