Bloom

Stately plump Buck Mulligan is just one of the highlights of this 2004 film adaptation of James Joyce’s deliciously complex and compelling novel Ulysses, which takes place on June 16, 1904, and examines the life the Leopold Bloom (Stephen Rea—The Crying Game), who wanders the streets of Dublin while his wife, Molly, has a passionate afternoon encounter in his own bed with her music teacher, and who catches a glimpse of his dead son in young Stephen Dedalus, whom readers know from Joyce’s other classic novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man—and although the 1967 black-and-white Ulysses is a classic in its own right, the new one does a better job of fleshing out the character, yes, of Molly, whose unpunctuated 48-page single-sentence final-chapter monologue is woven throughout the film, yes, and of capturing Bloom’s complicated fantasies and hallucinations, particularly those regarding sex, yes, it does, yes.Tenth Annual Celtic Knights of the Sea Bloomsday Celebration, Thurs., June 16, 7:30 p.m. at the Blue Room Theatre.