Many years after the fall of Troy, Queen Penelope (Juliette Binoche) faithfully awaits the return of her husband, Odysseus. Ithaca, her now benighted home, has been overrun with ambitious suitors who sleep with the monarch’s maids and terrorise the hungry, impoverished islanders. Her displaced adult son, Telemachus (Charlie Plummer), remains shielded by the bonds of blood; his mother is unlikely to marry the man responsible for his death.
Unknown to Penelope, Odysseus (a sinewy Ralph Fiennes) has washed ashore. Shepherds and boatswain tell tales around campfires of his mighty military deeds.
He remembers the war differently: “We burned it to the ground and drowned the flames in blood.” He ruefully wanders his wretched homeland, unrecognised by anyone save his dog, Argo.
Unfolding at a stately and contemplative pace, The Return couldn’t be further from Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion spectacles or the brawny action of the Brad Pitt-headlined Troy.
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Uberto Pasolini’s minimalist adaptation of the gory closing chapters of Homer’s epic poem eschews witches, monsters and goddesses in favour of PTSD. There are no frills. The Corfu-shot exteriors are muddy. The palace is (appropriately) spartan. Even the loincloths are skimpy.
Odysseus cannot escape the horrors of war. Most secondary-school students will know why he and Telemachus join forces. The final scenes are simultaneously visceral and sorrowful, a bloodbath given weight by Fiennes’s tortured turn. For the original western hero, home is where the severed hearts are.
The solemn screenplay, by the director, John Collee, and the late Edward Bond, leans into a terrible sense of inevitability as Telemachus sets sail, suggesting the cycle of violence begins anew.
At its best The Return recalls Pier Paolo Pasolini’s sublime, pared-back Medea, even if the gritty realism of Uberto Pasolini (no relation) does leave one yearning for the magic of that earlier film and the source material. Couldn’t we have one visitation from the goddess Athena?
In cinemas from Friday, April 11th
