‘The Return’ Review: Uberto Pasolini Beautifully Reinterprets “The Odyssey” with the Reunion of Juliette Binoche and a Ripped Ralph Fiennes | TIFF
It’s quite a risk to take an epic poem and only adapt the non-mythical parts into a film. After all, this isn’t the nth take on a Shakespeare play, but the epic fantastical story of The Odyssey, in which one man travels across continents and through Greek gods in order to get home. That being said, it is a story that is well-known and many of us already know how it goes and how it ends. Uberto Pasolini takes quite the gamble with his new film The Return – it details only the last few books of Homer’s writing, where Odysseus (a ripped Ralph Fiennes) has finally returned to his island of Ithaca, where his kingdom has been missing its king for 20 years. His wife Queen Penelope (Juliette Binoche) has been facing growing dangerous pressure from unruly suitors, eager to marry her and become the new king.
In the same spirit of how Joel Coen made The Tragedy of Macbeth minimalist, The Return strips the journey of Odysseus and Penelope down to its bare bones. While this part of the poem may be commonly interpreted as a celebratory finale of The Odyssey, Pasolini opts for a somber epilogue, a portrait of a kingdom in ruin as a result of a war happening far away, while a survivor of war wrestles with his trauma and the guilt of what he has become.
Much of the film rests on characters, their gazes towards each other, and the silence between words spoken. Whether it’s Odysseus telling a story of the Battle of Troy to the local villagers to Penelope asking Odysseus (disguised as a beggar) if he knew her husband, there is a lot of emotion being communicated through the eyes. Fiennes and Binoche (in their first reunion since The English Patient) give wonderfully subdued performances here, almost as if they each have their own internal soliloquy. It is undoubtedly a slow-burn drama, as the film takes its time before having Odysseus and Penelope finally meet – a good amount of the film cuts back and forth between them wallowing in their own thoughts on opposite sides of the island.
But the film contains a subtle sense of escalation throughout. The screenplay by John Collee, Edward Bond, and Pasolini establishes the growing tension between Penelope and the horde of suitors, who abuse the comfort and wealth of the kingdom and become increasingly mutinous (there is a particularly uncomfortable performance by Marwan Kenzari as Antinous, the most arrogant snake of all the suitors). It’s only a matter of time before violence happens. The writers also take a few creative liberties and departures from the original text. One of the major changes involves Odysseus’ son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer). In addition to the tension between mother and son, and what could potentially happen to Telemachus once a suitor takes over, the film flips Odysseus’ reveal to his son on its head – while the original poem sees Telemachus immediately joining his father and plotting revenge with him, The Return sees Telemachus repulsed by his father. Though it must be addressed that Plummer constantly looks miscast in every scene he’s in, this change in character dynamic does wonders for the story, as family relationships are further complicated by core ideas that we would more likely find in a war veteran drama.
Pasolini insists on us having these ideas constantly on our minds, and to help with that, he consistently keeps The Return looking unfancy. Rooms are bare, farms are dying, outfits are dull-looking. This isn’t the type of film that will be recognized for its elaborate production design or costume design. The tradeoff, though, is it helps bring its thematic ideas into a primal focus. It seems as if the only thing still thriving is the island itself, where no traces of human civilization can be found. This visual approach works in favor of the film’s thesis, as it reduces what was typically a glorified romantic epic down to a dirty primitive desolation.
Despite some pitfalls, The Return succeeds in its reinterpretation. In addition to exploring Odysseus’ trauma and guilt, Pasolini effectively paints a picture of how war affects home. Even if it’s happening far away, it creates an absence here at home, a void that grows into a sickness, to the point where the only way to get rid of it is possibly more violence. It seems that, like the title suggests, when war comes to an end, it’s not just the person who finally returns home. War finds a way back.
Grade: B+
This review is from the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival where The Return had its world premiere. Bleecker Street will release the film theatrically in the U.S. on December 6, 2024.
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