The Return 2024 Historical Movie Review

The final part of Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey, is one of the most cathartic and romantic endings in all of fiction. It's cathartic in the violence the family unleashes on their tormentors, and romantic in the bond it represents between a man and a woman, separated by geography, time, and their own problems. (This isn't romantic in the "flowers and sweets for my birthday" sense, but in the "I'll bring you the head of my enemy in a leather bag" sense.) Stream historical movies The Return on Theflixtor Tv.

Hero Odysseus, Trojan War After 10 years of wandering the wine-black waters of the Aegean with his crew, he washes up on the shores of Ithaca, the island where he was once king. He intends to be reunited with his adult son Telemachus and his wife Penelope, who are besieged by Penelope's suitors, who have plundered the island's food supplies and sullied her family home with debauchery. Disguised as a beggar by the goddess Athena and 20 years older than Odysseus, he is unrecognized even by his loved ones.

The ending is both a restoration of the old order and a righteous bloodbath, and, despite being on a more intimate scale, it is as original and exciting as the protagonist's adventures at sea. When you know that director Uberto Pasolini and screenwriters Edward Bond and John Corry have combined the last nine "books" of Homer's epic poem to make a self-contained film, that sounds about as safe a job as holding a press conference with the hero's trusty longbow in hand.

The result is, unfortunately, a well-acted but earnest production. It takes forever to get Odysseus' household back on track. The film seems oblivious to how shallow the acting and "realism" in film is (much of it is shot, like the TV series, in fairly simple handheld close-ups) and how fundamentally contradictory the overlay of Homer's myth with modern psychological drama is. There is material the filmmakers can never reconcile (Penelope's failure to recognize the man who fathered her child, for example, is more acceptable in a story featuring cyclops, sirens and sea monsters). The rigorous approach has produced some fascinating retellings of old tales before, but this isn't one of them, even if the author is gifted.

From the start, the film has an exhausting existential atmosphere that never lets up.

The actors are totally convinced of the film's vision. The central characters -- Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus, Juliette Binoche as Penelope, and Charlie Plummer as Telemachus -- appear as psychologically scarred survivors of war, privation, and pain of all kinds, gazing out at the crashing ocean. Penelope weaves what she claims is a garment for her future wedding, and says she'll choose a suitor when it's finished (there's no rush, of course). She, too, gazes out at the sea. Our first glimpse of Odysseus sees him lying face-down and naked on the shore after a shipwreck in which the remains of his crew perish.

Binoche, working with Fiennes again after The English Patient, has the presence necessary to play a woman with a stately air who has endured decades of house arrest. More than any other actor in the cast, she is a credible non-millennial. Some of the film's best moments are Penelope's wordless reaction shots as she ponders solutions to problems or observes the various ways in which the suitors have disrespected the island, and especially her home. Is there more going on in Binoche's performance than in Penelope's script? I think so. Penelope's deft guidance of her suitor's attention would have benefited from more detail and a more direct recognition that the characters in The Odyssey are not really "like us," and that we can't make them look that way without removing elements. That's what makes the poem what it is.

Muscular and toned, Fiennes is a powerful action hero who ages well, but is never flashy. The film's (minimal) fighting and killing is choreographed to make no man do anything that is beyond human reach. Fiennes is known for his ability to exploit every nuance of complex dialogue, but here he plays a strong, silent type, someone trying to play the long game of selling illusions and restoring a world in disarray, and it was initially a pleasure to watch him in such a contrasting cast.

But the blossoms begin to fade when you realize that the film often requires him to be quiet and reflective or stare into the distance, which repeats what we already know about him rather than deepens the character. And when the poem's magical or supernatural elements are omitted, it loses much of its power and depth. In this poem, Odysseus doesn't speak to a goddess or to the spirits of those killed in war. He's a veteran returning home, wanting to get the fools out of his house and get back to his wife and son, and hoping they won't be too angry.