When Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) tells his wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche) in The Return that she couldn’t possibly understand what he went through in the two decades they were apart, you have to wonder what exactly he means in this case. Is it the burdens of war and meaningless bloodshed, which form the core of Uberto Pasolini’s adaptation of the last third of The Odyssey? Or does he mean, you know, the nymphs, cannibals, sirens, sea monsters etc etc?
There are no gods or monsters in Pasolini’s film, which the producer-turned-filmmaker (and nephew of the great director Luchino Visconti) co-wrote with John Collee and Edward Bond. It opts for material realism (though not historical, since the Bronze Age people of Ithaca appear to be living in what looks to be a medieval fort). Yet plausibility is not the same as emotional veracity. And not only does The Return root out any and all mentions of the supernatural, but it does away with the emotions that power what is one of the most influential yet sparingly adapted stories in existence.
Odysseus returns home from his misadventures to find his palace invaded by rowdy suitors after his wife’s hand in marriage. She remains steadfast. Everyone else presumes he’s dead. His son, Telemachus (Charlie Plummer), finds his life under threat.
In Homer’s epic, husband and wife, separated by the machinations of mortals and immortals, decades of happiness ripped from their fingers, are reunited only after their home is cleansed through violence. “As the sight of land is welcome to men who are swimming towards the shore,” the poem goes, “Even so was her husband welcome to her as she looked upon him, and she could not tear her two fair arms from about his neck.” It’s passionate. It’s electric.
Yet, in The Return, this restorative union is replaced with a melancholy anti-war parable in which Odysseus, it’s implied, chooses to stay away out of fear his wife won’t love the man he became, and his people won’t respect a man who failed to protect his fellow soldiers. On paper, it sounds a promising subversion – but Pasolini’s film never feels much in conversation with its source material, beyond a brief warning from Odysseus that stories are not always what they seem.
The Return is frosty and formal in all corners, from its minimalist costumes by Sergio Ballo, its solemn supporting turns (bar Marwan Kenzari as chief suitor Antinous, who adds some welcome charm to his character’s haughtiness), its conventional staging, and even the thudding way it contrasts the images of spilled blood with the red shroud Penelope weaves each day and undoes each night. Everyone’s painted with the same coat of muted misery – because war steals men’s souls and drains women’s spirits.
It relies too much, then, on its heavily publicised reunion between Fiennes and Binoche, decades after The English Patient (1996) and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1992). Fiennes has a little more to work with. He presents his muscular body for the camera (the film is heavy in loincloths): taut and angry, all sharp edges and bulging veins. Yet, under the dirt and blood shine those clear-blue eyes, haunted by every shade of grief.
Binoche, meanwhile, shoulders Penelope’s pain, but isn’t given much of a place to put it. There are multiple scenes in which she’s asked to look intensely regretful while people have out-of-focus, unenthusiastic sex in the background. Certainly, The Return shows us the drudgery of a life in stasis. But those are measly returns on stripping the life out of a literary titan. Christopher Nolan, it’s over to you now.
Dir: Uberto Pasolini. Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Charlie Plummer, Tom Rhys Harries, Marwan Kenzari, Claudio Santamaria. Cert 15, 116 minutes
‘The Return’ is in cinemas from 11 April
