by John Green
Starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, The Return retells the story of Odysseus’s homecoming 20 years after waging war against the Trojans. Based on Homer’s mythological tale, it has been adapted by Edward Bond, John Collee, and Uberto Pasolini – a nephew of Luchino Visconti and former banker – who also directs.
It has the feel of a Shakespearean tragic drama, and indeed I feel the stage would have been more appropriate for it than the screen. It is a riveting watch, nevertheless, and a tour de force for Ralph Fiennes, as Odysseus. He totally dominates throughout with his spare gestures and expressive face, changing like a landscape through the seasons. Juliette Binoche, playing his wife Penelope, also excels but has a largely passive role. Unfortunately, the script writers and the director have chosen not to give Penelope a more active and assertive role, choosing instead to stay with the clichéd picture of women as mere supportive characters in history.
Odysseus is washed up, unclothed and half-dead on the shore of the island of Ithaca, where he is found by a slave, who takes him into his hut and looks after him. His wife, Penelope, refuses to believe that her husband is dead, although their son Telemachus, who has never known his father, believes he is and that his mother should remarry one of her many suitors.
When Odysseus arrives at the palace, she fails to recognise the old man as her long-lost husband – hardly credible, given his unmistakable facial features and the fact that she has waited so many years for his return – who arrives at the palace, with his scarred and bruised body and wild beard. He is reluctant to make known who he is, hiding from the world in shame and bitterness. He has not only been responsible for the loss of so many sons of Ithaca in the war but has returned to a kingdom neglected and economically ruined.
The myth is treated as a factual story, with strong resonances for our contemporary world. It is an implicit anti-war film that has an urgent relevance. It reveals how war not only destroys enemies but also brutalises and dehumanises the victors.
Penelope sums up its message with her heartfelt plea: “Why do men go to war? Why do they burn other people’s houses? Why do they rape and murder women and children? Aren’t they happy with their own family?” reiterated by Odysseus himself as he grieves at his father’s tomb: “The dead are the lucky ones”, he intones mournfully.
It is beautifully shot, mostly in close-up, with interiors in browns and sepias, reminiscent of Rembrandt’s works. The claustrophobia of life on a small island, with seething unrest and conspiracies being hatched behind every door is captured perfectly. The palace is besieged by a motley bunch of Penelope’s well-muscled suiters, greedy for the throne and power.
I do however have a number of caveats to my praise. Why is it that so many directors of historical films lack the imagination to picture life as it was really lived in times of hardship and scarcity? The young men – and they are almost all young – in this film are all physically like Greek statues, well fed and gymn-trained, with faces and bodies unscarred by life. They all look as if they’ve been recruited straight from drama school and come from privileged, middle-class backgrounds. Even the slave who takes in Odysseus, could have stepped straight out of a Canary Wharf office block. His face reveals nothing of the hardship and oppression he must have experienced. And all these secondary characters are so outplayed by Fiennes that they come across as mere extras, despite their valiant efforts to give their roles some meaning.
The sets also leave much to be desired. The makeshift camp of homeless citizens around the old palace has more the feel of a contemporary music festival than actual living quarters in ancient Greece, and the people’s primitive huts look as if they have been constructed for a reality show. The actors’ clothing also looks as if it has come cleanly laundered straight from the studio’s costume department. I recall the famous Helene Weigel, when playing the role of Mother Courage in Brecht’s play of the same name, jealously guarding her carefully collected clothing and items of equipment for each performance: battered cups and kitchen utensils, clothing that looked well-worn and as if it had been dragged through the mud and along the roads for many years, like its owner herself.
All this presents an incongruous contrast to Odysseus himself who, in Fiennes’ masterful playing, does express his past and the traumas he has experienced as a warrior on the fields of war.
Towards the end we are presented with a climactic and grisly bloodbath as Odysseus, single-handedly picks off his enemies one by one, using his famed bow and arrows. An unbelievable scenario, but it does underline the senselessness of war and killing. Reunited with his faithful wife, as she sponges off the gore from his ravaged body, they reinforce their love by promising each other “to remember and forget” together.
I don’t know how far Edward Bond’s contribution to the script has been kept in this version but it certainly lacks his political acumen and satirical bite. The Return, however, is certainly a film worth watching despite its failings.
