The Return (Film Review)
Dec. 11th, 2025 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakYes, about a year after it was released in the English speaking world, The Return finally made it to German cinemas, thus still arriving before Christopher Nolan's big budget take on the Odyssey next year. Like many another person, I assume sight unseen that Nolan's take will be pretty much the opposite, given that The Return focuses exclusively on, well, the story of the suitors harrassing Penelope and Telemachus and Odysseuys' return to Ithaca with ensueing consequences, has thrown out the Gods and any other magical elements entirely from the story and takes place solely on Ithaca within a few days with a small ensemble of characters. (Incidentally, the "Penelope and Telemachus on Ithaca/ The Homecoming" part of the story actually is the main tale of the Homeric epic, which reliably surprises everyone who reads it. The adventures with Sirens, Cyclops and Sea Monsters part is contained in the middle where Odysseus (not the most reliable narrator under the best of circumstances) is narrating it to his hosts and a relatively short portion of the story.) All this being said, having now watched it, I would call The Return a good movie with some stellar performances by our leads - Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes uniting their actory prowess for the third time - , but that it fails in one important regard as an adaptation of the Odyssey, and no, it's not because there are no Gods and other supernatural beings around. But again: as a film, it is great and immensely watchable.
Director Uberto Pasolini and his scriptwriters have some very clear themes here, and what war does to people is a big one. Odysseus doesn't reveal his identity for quite some time not because of cunning, fears that he'll suffer the fate of Agamemnon or just ingrained decaptive habits but because he's filled to the max with self loathing about who he has become, and says, in conversation with everyone's favourite swineheard Eumaios when still pretending to be an anonymous veteran, that the destruction "we" visited upon Troy now faces him wherever he goes, that he can't leave the war behind because it's everywhere. And indeed, the Suitors on Ithaca don't just abuse the sacred law of hospitality, stay where they're not wanted, try to bully Penelope into marrying one of them and plot to kill her son at one point - all of which happens in the Odyssey - they really behave like an occupying army, including the killing parts of the male population and raping the women. (Most though not all of the Homeric suitors are from Ithaca itself, hence their families later wanting revenge, but not in this movie, where they all seem to hail from elsewhere. ) Basically, they mirror the behaviour Odysseus and the other Greeks have dealt out in the past on his own island. It's very Vietnam veteran movie like, down to Odysseus not really doubting he can take on the Suitors, but the very fact he knows what a good killer he is holding him back (for a wihle). And it's not like there aren't seeds for this in the Odyssey, where the very first thing, according to himself, Odysseus and his men did after leaving Troy, before the more famous adventures start, is to raid another place, ikll the men and share the women. As you do. While being horrified to hear about the Sutors' harrassment of Penelope on Ithaca. And the fact that Odysseus has survivor's guiilt for not managing to bring a single man back to Ithaca of those who left with him might owe something to Emily Wilson's new translation of the Odyssey, where her phrasing points that out - that he couldn't bring back any of his men - as an active failure on his part instead of something that happened to him right at the start.
However. Translate it as "wily", "complicated", "the man with many tricks and turns" or any other way, Odysseus' capacity for deception, for plotting and scheming and for thinking ahead is a key part of his character. That he's eventually able to kill all the suitors despite them outnumbering him (and his son, and Eumaios) in droves isn't just because he's a trained warrior, it's because he arranged it so all the doors of the hall they were in would be locked and their weapons hidden away. Whereas Ralph Fiennes' character in this movie does convey intelligence, but not plotting, and him (and Telemachus and Eumaios, but mostly him) killing all the suitors is because he goes in beserker mode once he starts and they pretty much freeze and hide behind tables instead of fighting back. Very much not the same thing. And that's what my big qualification about the movie as an adaptation is about. Because I think if you take this quality away from Odysseus, he is no longer Odysseus, not even a traumatized version of him.
(This said, the Penelope Juliette Binoche plays is most definitely Penelope and the best screen version of her I've ever seen. Her praises will be sung soon.) This is, I can't emphasize this enough, not meant as a critique of Fiennes' performance of the character as written in the script, which is superb, and there is always so much going on in his face when he watches, observes or reacts even before he acts, and when he finally does speak, every syllable counts. The film includes one of the most famous literary scenes involving a dog ever, Argos the old dog recognizing Odysseus and dying, and it's incredibly moving, a mostly silent scene with Odysseus just murmuring his name and stroking the dog (his fur mangy and old, as described in Homer) as he dies while Eumaios stares and realises who the stranger (who in this version hasn't revealed himself to him yet) has to be. And the first encounter between Penelope and Odysseus is likewise incredibly well done, both actors radiating intensity and heartbreak (because, again without it being spelled out, the audience realises Penelope does recognize him - and that he comes as a stranger instead of her husband). All their scenes together are superb and moving, and the film does a great job of the audience wanting the two of them to truily uniite and embrace and start their mutual healing, while understanding this has to be earned and is the emotional climax the whole narrative is working towards.
Penelope here has the intelligence, cunning, determination, but also the quiet passion of Homer's character. (And the arguments with her son, which other adaptations I've seen avoid, though what the arguments are about is somewhat different here.) And because the violence the Suitors deal out has been upped to an occupying army like level, the sense of her being in constant danger and aware of it, that they could at any point just abandon all pretense of wooing or waiting for her decision) is there as well, and the line between outward stoicism and inward rage, despair and yet resolutoin not to give up is superbly drawn. Binoche, too, says so much with each other her expressions; each of the weaving and dissolving the weaving of the day scenes, entirely silent, is emotionally so tense that despite theoretically knowing all about what she'll do your eyes are glued to the screen watching her. And when she and Odysseus finally abandon the subtext and speak clearly in the movie's last scene, it's her who truly sells you on their ability to be a couple again, to heal each other.
Other roles: other than Odysseus himself, the character most altered is probably Telemachus, though in his case I see it as the exchange of one ancient trope with a modern one. I.e. this Telemachus is one angry young man with (absent) Daddy issues who when his father reveals himself isn't overjoyed but truly angry with him for having been away this long, and his joining his father in the fight against the suitors later isn't planned but the moment where he decides he loves Dad after all. As in all adaptations I've seen Antinoos is presented as the one suitor who is truly into Penelope as a woman, not solely as the Queen of Ithaca, in his case updated also with a trope exchange fulfilling the same narrative function, i.e. he gets to be a creepy incel stalker type (iwho tells her at one point if she picks anyone but him, he'll kill them). Something missing entirely from this like from all other adapations, ironic given this movie's theme is so much about war and war veterans bring the violence with them, is Odysseus and Telemachus killing those maids they see as having collaborated with the suitors.
(I bet it will be absent from Nolan's film as well. There is just no way in this day and age you can present the hanging of twelve defenseless women as sympathetic, especially given that after the grand suitors slaughter healing is supposed to start.)
Bits and pieces: the scene with old nurse Eurykleia recognizing Odysseus by his scar when she washes his legs is a great show, not tell way from how the film uses the Homeric narrative to serve its themes of the war following Odysseus. When she starts to exclaim in joy he instinctively doesn't just press his hand on her mouth but takes her into a chokehold so she won't give him away, as he would have in a war situation. Stuff like this is why you believe Fiennes' character's holding back as long as he does with dealing out violence, that he knows and loathes what he has become. Like I said, it reminded me a lot of Vietnam veteran movies.
Costume wise, we don't get classical Athens as a model, thank the nonappearing in this movie gods, but some reasonably good Bronze age guess work (at least to my laywoman eyes without checking with the archaelogy first). Oh, and full frontal male nudity now and then, including of Ralph Fiennes, whose body looks believably like both that of a middle aged man, not a gym artist and someone who is a trained warrior. What threw me every time it was shown was the castle Penelope was living in. (Everyone else lived in plausible huts.) It just felt medieval for me. I mean, that's probably unfair, because there were Bronze Age fortresses, but I couldn't shake the medieval castle association.
Colour me amused that Telemachus' quest to leave the island and investigate whether anyone can tell him more about his father which opens the Odyssey (where he sails to Pylos, chats with old Nestor, then sails to Sparta and chats with Menelaos and Helen) here is shortened to "he sneaks off island on a fisher's boat, and when he comes back about 48 hours later - because as I mentioned, the island is the film's sole location) he tells Penelope he's run into a sailor who did see Odysseus post Troy - living on another island with another woman, and they shoiuld just forget about him, he's not coming back. (If there is one thing Odysseus actually can't be blamed for in the Odssey, it's being stuck with the Goddess Kalypso on an island for a few years. She's a Goddess! She won't let him leave by force!)
Lastly: gorgeous soundtrack! Entirely without pop song blasting over the credits, I might add. We're solely in instrumental, romantic 19th century style music mode throughout the film.
Director Uberto Pasolini and his scriptwriters have some very clear themes here, and what war does to people is a big one. Odysseus doesn't reveal his identity for quite some time not because of cunning, fears that he'll suffer the fate of Agamemnon or just ingrained decaptive habits but because he's filled to the max with self loathing about who he has become, and says, in conversation with everyone's favourite swineheard Eumaios when still pretending to be an anonymous veteran, that the destruction "we" visited upon Troy now faces him wherever he goes, that he can't leave the war behind because it's everywhere. And indeed, the Suitors on Ithaca don't just abuse the sacred law of hospitality, stay where they're not wanted, try to bully Penelope into marrying one of them and plot to kill her son at one point - all of which happens in the Odyssey - they really behave like an occupying army, including the killing parts of the male population and raping the women. (Most though not all of the Homeric suitors are from Ithaca itself, hence their families later wanting revenge, but not in this movie, where they all seem to hail from elsewhere. ) Basically, they mirror the behaviour Odysseus and the other Greeks have dealt out in the past on his own island. It's very Vietnam veteran movie like, down to Odysseus not really doubting he can take on the Suitors, but the very fact he knows what a good killer he is holding him back (for a wihle). And it's not like there aren't seeds for this in the Odyssey, where the very first thing, according to himself, Odysseus and his men did after leaving Troy, before the more famous adventures start, is to raid another place, ikll the men and share the women. As you do. While being horrified to hear about the Sutors' harrassment of Penelope on Ithaca. And the fact that Odysseus has survivor's guiilt for not managing to bring a single man back to Ithaca of those who left with him might owe something to Emily Wilson's new translation of the Odyssey, where her phrasing points that out - that he couldn't bring back any of his men - as an active failure on his part instead of something that happened to him right at the start.
However. Translate it as "wily", "complicated", "the man with many tricks and turns" or any other way, Odysseus' capacity for deception, for plotting and scheming and for thinking ahead is a key part of his character. That he's eventually able to kill all the suitors despite them outnumbering him (and his son, and Eumaios) in droves isn't just because he's a trained warrior, it's because he arranged it so all the doors of the hall they were in would be locked and their weapons hidden away. Whereas Ralph Fiennes' character in this movie does convey intelligence, but not plotting, and him (and Telemachus and Eumaios, but mostly him) killing all the suitors is because he goes in beserker mode once he starts and they pretty much freeze and hide behind tables instead of fighting back. Very much not the same thing. And that's what my big qualification about the movie as an adaptation is about. Because I think if you take this quality away from Odysseus, he is no longer Odysseus, not even a traumatized version of him.
(This said, the Penelope Juliette Binoche plays is most definitely Penelope and the best screen version of her I've ever seen. Her praises will be sung soon.) This is, I can't emphasize this enough, not meant as a critique of Fiennes' performance of the character as written in the script, which is superb, and there is always so much going on in his face when he watches, observes or reacts even before he acts, and when he finally does speak, every syllable counts. The film includes one of the most famous literary scenes involving a dog ever, Argos the old dog recognizing Odysseus and dying, and it's incredibly moving, a mostly silent scene with Odysseus just murmuring his name and stroking the dog (his fur mangy and old, as described in Homer) as he dies while Eumaios stares and realises who the stranger (who in this version hasn't revealed himself to him yet) has to be. And the first encounter between Penelope and Odysseus is likewise incredibly well done, both actors radiating intensity and heartbreak (because, again without it being spelled out, the audience realises Penelope does recognize him - and that he comes as a stranger instead of her husband). All their scenes together are superb and moving, and the film does a great job of the audience wanting the two of them to truily uniite and embrace and start their mutual healing, while understanding this has to be earned and is the emotional climax the whole narrative is working towards.
Penelope here has the intelligence, cunning, determination, but also the quiet passion of Homer's character. (And the arguments with her son, which other adaptations I've seen avoid, though what the arguments are about is somewhat different here.) And because the violence the Suitors deal out has been upped to an occupying army like level, the sense of her being in constant danger and aware of it, that they could at any point just abandon all pretense of wooing or waiting for her decision) is there as well, and the line between outward stoicism and inward rage, despair and yet resolutoin not to give up is superbly drawn. Binoche, too, says so much with each other her expressions; each of the weaving and dissolving the weaving of the day scenes, entirely silent, is emotionally so tense that despite theoretically knowing all about what she'll do your eyes are glued to the screen watching her. And when she and Odysseus finally abandon the subtext and speak clearly in the movie's last scene, it's her who truly sells you on their ability to be a couple again, to heal each other.
Other roles: other than Odysseus himself, the character most altered is probably Telemachus, though in his case I see it as the exchange of one ancient trope with a modern one. I.e. this Telemachus is one angry young man with (absent) Daddy issues who when his father reveals himself isn't overjoyed but truly angry with him for having been away this long, and his joining his father in the fight against the suitors later isn't planned but the moment where he decides he loves Dad after all. As in all adaptations I've seen Antinoos is presented as the one suitor who is truly into Penelope as a woman, not solely as the Queen of Ithaca, in his case updated also with a trope exchange fulfilling the same narrative function, i.e. he gets to be a creepy incel stalker type (iwho tells her at one point if she picks anyone but him, he'll kill them). Something missing entirely from this like from all other adapations, ironic given this movie's theme is so much about war and war veterans bring the violence with them, is Odysseus and Telemachus killing those maids they see as having collaborated with the suitors.
(I bet it will be absent from Nolan's film as well. There is just no way in this day and age you can present the hanging of twelve defenseless women as sympathetic, especially given that after the grand suitors slaughter healing is supposed to start.)
Bits and pieces: the scene with old nurse Eurykleia recognizing Odysseus by his scar when she washes his legs is a great show, not tell way from how the film uses the Homeric narrative to serve its themes of the war following Odysseus. When she starts to exclaim in joy he instinctively doesn't just press his hand on her mouth but takes her into a chokehold so she won't give him away, as he would have in a war situation. Stuff like this is why you believe Fiennes' character's holding back as long as he does with dealing out violence, that he knows and loathes what he has become. Like I said, it reminded me a lot of Vietnam veteran movies.
Costume wise, we don't get classical Athens as a model, thank the nonappearing in this movie gods, but some reasonably good Bronze age guess work (at least to my laywoman eyes without checking with the archaelogy first). Oh, and full frontal male nudity now and then, including of Ralph Fiennes, whose body looks believably like both that of a middle aged man, not a gym artist and someone who is a trained warrior. What threw me every time it was shown was the castle Penelope was living in. (Everyone else lived in plausible huts.) It just felt medieval for me. I mean, that's probably unfair, because there were Bronze Age fortresses, but I couldn't shake the medieval castle association.
Colour me amused that Telemachus' quest to leave the island and investigate whether anyone can tell him more about his father which opens the Odyssey (where he sails to Pylos, chats with old Nestor, then sails to Sparta and chats with Menelaos and Helen) here is shortened to "he sneaks off island on a fisher's boat, and when he comes back about 48 hours later - because as I mentioned, the island is the film's sole location) he tells Penelope he's run into a sailor who did see Odysseus post Troy - living on another island with another woman, and they shoiuld just forget about him, he's not coming back. (If there is one thing Odysseus actually can't be blamed for in the Odssey, it's being stuck with the Goddess Kalypso on an island for a few years. She's a Goddess! She won't let him leave by force!)
Lastly: gorgeous soundtrack! Entirely without pop song blasting over the credits, I might add. We're solely in instrumental, romantic 19th century style music mode throughout the film.
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Date: 2025-12-11 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-12 07:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-11 04:42 pm (UTC)I think the palace on Ithaka looked like a medieval palace because they actually used a ruined medieval palace as the set.
I commented on it as an adaptation here: https://gelliaclodiana.dreamwidth.org/621550.html
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Date: 2025-12-12 07:14 am (UTC)Medieval palace: go figure. Something Byzantine?
Thank you for the link!
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Date: 2025-12-11 06:42 pm (UTC)Incidentally, the "Penelope and Telemachus on Ithaca/ The Homecoming" part of the story actually is the main tale of the Homeric epic, which reliably surprises everyone who reads it.
it's me!
but aside from that, I'm really pleased they made a movie about that part, not least because Penelope is my girl :D
And the fact that Odysseus has survivor's guiilt for not managing to bring a single man back to Ithaca of those who left with him might owe something to Emily Wilson's new translation of the Odyssey, where her phrasing points that out - that he couldn't bring back any of his men - as an active failure on his part instead of something that happened to him right at the start.
huh! I definitely got that from Wilson's translation, as you know, and did NOT get that when I previously read, though also I was much younger then. It's very interesting.
Odysseus doesn't reveal his identity for quite some time not because of cunning, fears that he'll suffer the fate of Agamemnon or just ingrained decaptive habits but because he's filled to the max with self loathing about who he has become, and says, in conversation with everyone's favourite swineheard Eumaios when still pretending to be an anonymous veteran, that the destruction "we" visited upon Troy now faces him wherever he goes, that he can't leave the war behind because it's everywhere.
Me: Hm, this sounds like super interesting characterization... and at the same time, this doesn't sound so much like that complicated man I read about who cheerfully lied to everyone as far as I can tell because he just... likes to...
Me: Yeah... I like this, but this isn't the one I read about.
because, again without it being spelled out, the audience realises Penelope does recognize him - and that he comes as a stranger instead of her husband
ugh, this sounds AMAZING and basically exactly what I want out of an Odyssey adaptation
(If there is one thing Odysseus actually can't be blamed for in the Odssey, it's being stuck with the Goddess Kalypso on an island for a few years. She's a Goddess! She won't let him leave by force!)
It occurs to me that this must be a casualty of dispensing with all the gods and supernatural stuff, because what excuse does he have if Calypso isn't forcing him to stay there by her goddess power? (Which I love, that he is on the receiving end of force as well as on the dispensing end.)
How does the movie handle the very end? Do they just elide the entire families being upset part, or does he come to his senses?
Heh, I also really like the absence of pop song :)
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Date: 2025-12-12 07:13 am (UTC)Juliette Binoche’s Penelope really fits the most if the Penelope of the epic that I’ve ever seen. And yes, it’s not that Fiennes doesn’t deliver an equally great performance, it’s that his character, while interesting and moving, just isn’t Odysseus. (Again, not because he’s traumatized. I mean, Homer’s Odysseus might cheerfully lie at every opportunity, but he also cries a lot, this being millennia before crying will be coded as unmanly; he is grieving, he is at different times desperate and jumpy and paranoid (just look at how easily he was ready to believe the Phaeacians screwed him over when he woke up on Ithaca and didn’t recognize him in the mist. But what the film made me realise that one core element of Odysseus as a character which I need to see, no matter whether you present him as hero or villain or antihero or whatever otherwise, is the ability to plot and entrap people.
Re: Calypso, I think we’re meant to believe in this version, he was staying there because of his self loathing and fear Penelope couldn’t love the man he has become. Which is very modern psychology and very not Homeric.
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Date: 2025-12-12 05:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-12 07:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-14 03:23 am (UTC)Also I was trying to remember what Fiennes + Binoche were in together besides 'The English Patient' and of course I'd forgotten the Wuthering Heights film that even predated that one.