ULYSSES

The Idea

Josef spent all his life trying to achieve his goal – for the Ulysses Project. But now he is 54 years old and even though he is the creator of the Project, he is considered too old to go on the mission. He has a perfect family – a beautiful wife Julia, and a wonderful daughter named Elena, who both support him in his work, which is the meaning of his life. When the company finally discovers the right technology for the mission, they are reluctant to send Josef on the mission. But the owner of the company, who is also fighting with age, stands up for Josef and decides to send him.

The project is ready to go - a spaceship named Ulysses will travel until the end of the universe, discovering the undiscovered. Josef will be the first and only man to have done in the history of the world this trip and to unlock the mystery of the universe. But this is only the beginning of the Odyssey. Josef leaves the planet Earth in a spaceship that is able to travel without time and space influence. Millions of years will pass for us but not for Josef who will be inside the Ulysses.

Josef is alone in space, the Universe speeding endlessly by his spacecraft. He has infinite time to do... nothing. In the beginning he communicates with his family and his colleague John on Earth and, observing them in the monitor, frightened as they age in front of him. But then one day the only connection he has with Earth is gone. Now Josef only speaks into his mission-log. He explore worlds that he encounters that could support human life, he finds and explores some empty planets, some of them familiar to him, some not. He never finds any form of life, but he feels that he will very soon. He crosses unbelievable distances in space and time. Slowly, as the centuries roll by, he begins to feel that he is lost.

During this the trip into the space he is making a trip into his own mind as well. His mind during sleeping needs to catch some events, and because in the space ship nothing happened, time doesn’t past for Joseph, and days are always the same, traveling to arrive at the end of the Universe. His mind starts to dream about his past and the planet earth he has left. And because his human mind is not ready for millions of years of solitude, he starts to revert to his memories from the past. These dreams become obsessions. He remembers his wife, his daughter, his friends, and memories of Earth fill his mind in the form voices. He meets them on the new planets where he stops on the way. We are not able to understand what is real and what not. The familiar people he meets start to call him Ulysses. They said that is really far from the planet earth, and really far from the reality that he knows. They are the same persons but in different bodies. They said that all his friend and familiarizes are already dead a lot of centuries ago.

He can not longer bear that situation, his mind is not ready to stand it. Thousands and thousands of years have passed on Earth. Does his home world even exist? What was a problem for Josef on Earth is a curse now; on the planet Earth he was afraid to become old and die, but on the spaceship he is not able to getting old and die. He feels he made a critical mistake. Perhaps he did not become a part of history but just somebody who had crossed into the unknown. Did anyone remember him? Did mankind know or care for him any longer?
 
Josef arrives to a barren planet where he encounters his wife, as he remembers her young, and his daughter as a child. They tell him what a terrible father and husband he was. He is shaken by this. Back on the ship, in a moment of lucidity Josef realizes how far he has gone in his hallucinations and that he is losing his mind. When building the ship, he had installed a hibernation machine specifically because he knew a human is not capable of being alone for so long. Going in hibernation means abandoning the mission (to fail), because he can no longer observe the trip and the planets around. He decides to do it anyway. He falls asleep and when he hears the alarm only 3 seconds later, it has been billions of years and the ship has reached destination.

The Ulysses ship is floating towards a blue planet, that is the last planet all around, after that the only black. That situation seems the end of the end. On this planet Josef meets strange lady who says that she is the closest to what humans refer to as God. God give him a choose; asks Ulysses if he wants to cross beyond the end of the Universe and reach the unknown and be the only man in history who has done that or she will give him the last opportunity to go back to his own world, with his family and friends at the time of his departure! He would be back where he started, as if his long voyage has never been, and Ulysses project will be closed.

In the moment of choice Ulysses forgets all the pain and loneliness of the billions of years in space and the longing for his family and decides to go on. He has to live with this decision to cross the end of the Universe and discover what lies beyond. The woman smiles and says she knew that would be his choice because humans find the unconquered always more desirable.

Josef passes through what we know is the end of the universe and through what we are not able to know, all around is black. Slowly he starts to recognize the new galaxy and the beautiful planet in front of his ship. Everything is quite, only the beautiful of the nature is speaking, all the building are there unblemished, but not humans. The planet earth is now empty from human population.

Ulysses land, and he exits, there is nobody outside, or in the far distance. Only the wind is blowing through the empty streets and buildings that seem newly abandoned. He walk for a little around, spend one day, sleep in a church and the day after back to the spaceship.

Frightened of all that, Ulysses ignites his spaceship again and leaves the haunted Earth, not knowing what he has witnessed – a parallel universe or Earth after billions of years... He thinks that if he can cross back the entire Universe once more, everything must be the same as before. He knows that the possibility of success is remote, but he has to try. As the movie ends, we leave Ulysses in his spaceship, still trying to get back home.

Leonardo Corbucci

"ULYSSES" the movie ® - PRIMOCIAK All rights reserved