‘The Return’ Review – Ralph Fiennes Strikes an Imposing Figure in Timeless Epic

There have been plenty of films that have mined the stories of Odysseus, often concentrating on the more iconic adventures of his youth, his travails in Troy, and other elements considered worthy for such a mythologically resonant heroic figure. What sets The Return apart, as the title suggests, is that it strips the man from the earlier exploits, crafting a deeply humanist, and in turn deeply effective, portrait of a man in the final chapters of the grand story of his life. Directed by Uberto Pasolini (Still Life), the majority of the film rests upon the shoulders of two key characters. We first see a man stripped of all his glory, literally. Naked on a beach, washed to shore and bleeding from various contusions, he appears to be at death’s door lying there baking in the sun. He’s soon rescued by a local slave farmer who helps bring him back to health, who regales his patient with stories about the corruption that has beset the island of Ithaca in the absence of its king.

What Is ‘The Return’ About?

With a sun-dabbled island location and claustrophobic caves shot with precision by Romanian cinematographer Marius Paduru, the hardscrabble landscape matches elegantly with the creases of worry and fatigue played on the canvas of Fiennes’ face. So many of the reactions by both Odysseus and Penelope are exercises in tortured restraint, culminating in a scene where the beggar-figure and queen circle each other like a waltz, only to have the smallest of cues and piercing glances to provide the deeper subtext to the words actually uttered.

Thus, when the film finally does explode into more chaotic and violent moments, the contrast is all the more satisfying. The challenge throughout is for us to find commonality with such arch characters, themselves so fundamental to our very concept of storytelling that it’s hard to find freshness in the telling. It’s a credit to the storytelling as well as these extraordinary performers that we’re drawn into their world as if we’re there to witness, never feeling the distance of time, while never appearing patronizingly contemporary in the form of a revision.

‘The Return’ Is All About Building Tension

The Return, in ways both gentle and overt, draws back the bow of tension until it’s finally released, culminating in a way that’s less cathartic, and more the feeling of inevitability. There are even times when the very mythmaking of the king’s Odyssey is interrogating, making sense of grander mythological events with the benefit of the more muted telling by a witness and participant. It’s this stripping away of most pretense, be it the trappings of the royal household or the more literary exuberances that differing tellings may have injected, that gives the events we ourselves witness that much more power.

The Return is now in theaters.

REVIEW

The Return is a new take on a classic tales with excellent performances by Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche.

Pros

• The film smartly takes a different perspective to this story.
• Both Fiennes and Binoche give performances that are each exercises in tortured restraint.
• The film is an effective character piece that builds tension expertly, proving to be as timely as ever.

Cons

• There are challenges it encounters in attempting to find something fresh from a classic story.

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