German experimental filmmaker Werner Nekes has directed this avant-garde feature-length film based on the “Ulysses” of both James Joyce and Homer, and on a 24-hour play The Warp, by Neil Oram. Improvisation played a large part in the production, not only out of low-budget necessity, but out of faithfulness to what Nekes calls Joyce's “epiphany” technique of transforming accidental observations and bits of information into a coherent whole. Nekes describes the play The Warp (adapted by its author for the film) as “although theatrical in form, a novel of development for our generation, describing the most important intellectual stages, beginning in the fifties: existentialism,...hippies,...Scientology, etc.--all that you know as clichés. It connects a history of the development of our mind with the story of a photographer.”
Critic Achim Forst writes: “In Uliisses, Nekes deals with a story which has been told again and again. And because Nekes is a filmmaker, with him the Odyssey becomes the trip of a photographer.... The (film offers an) abundance of images and optical acoustic information.... Anyone who does not shrink from the effort can invade Nekes' world of ideas and follow the fascinating translations of literary themes by experimental techniques....”