In Ralph Fiennes’ latest film, The Return, he provides the most physicality the audience has seen throughout his career, a task made necessary by the film being a raw rendition of the famous poem ‘The Odyssey’, by Homer. Almost 30 years have passed since Juliette Binoche teamed with Fiennes on screen in The English Patient which won an animated Oscar as best in 1996. The two come across Fiennes as a solid rock and Binoche as a nervous wreck wearing and tearing their immortal literary characters with a burning rage. The Return her is a realistic lesson of the atrocities of war, the psychological damage it brings upon its victims and the power of love’s devotion.
A man without clothes is found on shore in Ithaca. Ever since King Odysseus (Fiennes) sailed off 20 years back with the strongest men of Ithaca for the Trojan War, the island has known no peace. The absence and supposed death had caused masters of mischief and wickedness to reign supreme. Ithaca is plagued by envious suitors who harass the island in anticipation of Queen Penelope (Binoche) finally taking a husband. Their child, Telemachus (Charlie Plummer), is attempting to save his mother’s honor. However, he understands that his mother’s period of mourning is over.
Bringing food for the suitors encamped around the castle. For making food, Eumaeus (Claudio Santamaria) has brought a sucking pig. He is ill-treated and ridiculed but makes a very serious point. Eumaeus: `food will soon be in short supply on this island. Antinous: (Marwan Kenzari), their shrewd leader and the most anxious about getting a hold of Penelope, tells him to shut up and know his place.’ Eumaeus comes home to find his dog attacking a scrap-covered, naked beggar on all fours coming up the path.
Meanwhile inside the castle, as for Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, she is busy weaving a death shroud for her sick father-in-law. She vowed to say that she would only get married when she’s done with it. Little do the suitors know that she never touches her weaving, instead carefully unravels the work she completes every day at the end of day as the only means for the suiters to leave her alone. The most desperate of the suiters continues to advance his cause, Antinous threatening otherwise Telemachus for his life. As he cleans the stranger’s wounds, a quiet Eumaeus’s ear intently observed the stranger’s body, a true sculpture of muscle, sinew, and scars instead of the man stacked with bones. He asks in a hoarse voice if the Queen is still alive. Depressed Odysseus’s loyal companions, Eumaeus explains about the tragedy of the island and that the Queen has been true to her husband.
Uberto Pasolini, an Italian filmmaker and co-writer of the script for the film The Full Monty, also combines a profound minimalism. The Return is not an inflated Hollywood swords and sandals epic, but rather a small tale told in brutal aesthetic. The peasants of Ithaca are under the same threat as the rest of the island – the vile forces of the invaders who take what they want, kill and rape any that oppose them.
It is depressing to see scenes of Penelope, wretched from the sight of her would-be husbands, as they desecrate and loot her people with very little fear of repercussions. Through his eyes, Telemachus has only anger for not being able to return the favor. Alone, what can he do against such vile men? The fate of Ithaca shows us how innocents have been victimized by wars. The defenders will allow the defenceless ones to bear the brunt of the storm.
Fiennes remains, as one of the great actors of the generation; what is striking is the compairson of his work in this particular film and Fiennes’s films in 2024, especially Conclave. With such a huge stature, he however comes out right from all aspects in The return. Odysseus is, in the first act, entirely shattered emotionally, psychologically, and physically. It has taken him years, and no illusion of strength exists for him to return to his home. As a beggar, no one would know his identity, which allows him to witness the actions of the suitors with confidence. He is also eager to learn what has happened to his family.
The climax of the struggle bears much of the weight that Telemachus had to lift. It follows a completely apoplectic Telemachus who, after learning the true identity of the beggar, loses control of his emotions and begins to hurl curses and insults to his father. Not to mention that every bit of their suffering lies at his toes. A king’s answer is as explosive as the question asked to him. How in the world could Telemachus permit this to go on and let Ithaca be the center of such embarrassment? This is, to put it mildly, no joyous reunion at all.
Telemachus’s weak and timid disposition is made light of as the Tuesday Binoche Alexandru proves otherwise and reveals the role of oppressed female in a war ravaged society. Penelope realizes, for instance, how it is wrong to expect men’s fighting spirit from Telemachus, who, having seen his father only a fleeting instant in his infancy, has never even been granted the opportunity to know who the man is. Antinous, or any other man for that matter, would kill him without even thinking about it just to bring her to submission. Her calculated machinations with the loom are merely an attempt to get her son out of her husband’s grasp. For whoever the new king was, Telemachus would become a thorn in his side until an heir of his own was born. The Return has no small share of palace politics because each actor tries to play his cards most effectively in the cabalistic Game of thrones that is the Return.
The Return slowly builds towards a climactic and explosive end. Its quite common knowledge even for High school graduates that when Odyssues regains his strength and wits, it is over in a minute. All these emotions can be felt when one sees the life’s journey of ennut. However in the third part, the story does consider as well if Penelope and all others accept the beggar to be Odysseus. There is one slight hitch. War changes everyone. Is it possible that Odysseus never intended to return to face up with those that he left behind? Or Penelope, who was said to be faithful, might feel differently about her husband after witnessing what he has turned into? Learn all that in our movie. The answer leaves a mark about how strong true love is.
The Return possesses a sense of a shower head yet it has other objectives that change the nature of the film – characters & plot development, which is on the slower side. The film is like the book. It appears, neither of the two is in a hurry. The buildup of the plot and the characters is gradual as if one were to cook in a slow cooker. Or in this case a crock pot movie. Fiennes and Binoche are not bad and over forty and superb actresses. I hope it doesn’t take that long for them to be seen together again.
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