I had the honor of attending a screening of the movie “The Return” at Thessaloniki International Film Festival (TIFF) before its global theatrical release. I was lucky enough to recieve a press pass for the festival and even hear the talents in front of and behind the camera speak about their creation.
The main characters of “The Return” are played by Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes who, along with the director Uberto Pasolini, attended the TIFF.
Having these adored, acclaimed actors attend the screenings and share some of their wisdom made this movie one of the most anticipated events of the festival. Between screenings, red carpets and press conferences you could feel the excitement in the air. The actors and producers spoke passionately about the creation and even partially became emotional while reflecting on the experience. Seeing and experiencing the personalities that make a movie come to life gave me a new sense of appreciation for the story unfolding on screen. Unfortunately, attending all these occasions and witnessing how much pride people have for this movie also made the actual watching experience even more disappointing for me.
„The Return” is an adaption of the last parts of Homer’s Odyssey. It shows the aftermath of the war of Troy in Greek mythology, where Odysseus returns to his kingdom as a war-scarred beggar and remains undercover as his wife and son have to fight off the many suitors that wish to replace him. Within this classical story, Fiennes and Binoche are reuniting for the third time in their careers to play Odysseus and his wife Penelope. Uberto Pasolini strips all of the supernatural aspects of the source material away and instead chooses to focus on the internal struggles and relationships of the mortal characters as the family finds their way back to each other.
The amazing performance by Ralph Fiennes makes it seem like the movie has a lot more to say than it actually does. The movie provides you with the illusion of an emotional journey, as Odysseus grapples with the ramifications of the war regarding his sense of humanity and identity. For attempting to reflect on the cruelty of war, this movie has surprisingly many needlessly gruesome, repetitive fighting scenes that rarely serve a purpose or advance the plot.
The directing also fluctuates heavily in its quality and effect. At its best, the camerawork shows intimate, thought-provoking shots of victims of violence as well as of the vulnerable and scarred Odysseus. At its worst, the characters find themselves in superhero-style action scenes that fully break the intimacy of those instances of beautiful cinematography.
At the press conference, the director of the movie revealed that he has wanted to tell this story for 30 years. I do not see why the story appealed to him so much. The violence glorifying, schematic storytelling of most ancient mythology is rarely agreeable with a contemporary, progressive approach. Spinning this blood-hungry story about deception into a violence-critical story about war-trauma is like retelling sleeping beauty as a story about sexual assault, but keeping the “happy end” between prince and princess the same.
The characters are the focus of this movie with many emotional dialogues and outbursts. But as it is common in epical storytelling, the characters seem to have been created with little depth, simply fulfilling their role in the conflict.
Penelope’s character especially falls victim to this, which is a tragic waste of Binoche’s versatility and talent. Penelope’s only motivation for her actions is her overbearing love and loyalty to her husband. Juliette Binoche described her character at the conference as a “very modern woman” and highlighted her sense of agency as she “has the power to make decisions”. But while Penelope finds herself in a position of power, she uses none of it. Her only objective is to balance her devotion to Odysseus with the one to her son, for her life and character only exist in relation to the men around her.
She is, however, the only person to criticize the inhumanity of the final massacre, in which her husband and son slaughter all of the men courting her while they beg for their lives. But her worries about how little the people closest to her seem to value human life are quickly shut down by Odysseus, as he argues that there was no other solution.
But was there really no other solution? How can Odysseus contemplate the horrors of war for the entirety of the movie, but then show no remorse about bringing that sort of savagery into his home? The film contradicts its attempts to adress meaningful, modern discussions at every point. It is unclear what it wants to say about violence, I doubt that the movie itself even knows it.
“The return” is undoubtedly beautiful to look at and moving only because the actors manage to find a lot of emotion in the shallow characters they were assigned. It’s also hard to criticize the writers for this shallowness, when the core issue doesn’t stem from them, but from the poorly chosen source material.
As a big Greek mythology enthusiast, I appreciate most iterations of the Odyssey, but isolating the very ending of the story and stripping away its mythology makes this big, epic story feel small and trivial. This makes the movie way too repetitive and dragged out, just to cover the fact that the edited source material does not provide enough of a plot or depth to justify a full-length feature film.
Furthermore, it is almost impossible to make the violent heroes of Greek mythology have modern opinions on war and society without making them inherently hypocritical. I was first and foremost disappointed by the message of this movie. Especially in these times when it is important to reflect on your humanitarian duties and relation to war, there is no need or justification for more preachy, self-contradictory war movies.
