Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on basement television.
There’s almost always some value in looking at the true classics when it comes to making a story. There are a number of ways you can do this, of course. You can adapt a classic story into a new setting (like The Lion King is animated Hamlet) or you can play it straight (like Olivier’s Hamlet is Hamlet). With big, sweeping stories, a miniseries is more in keeping unless you go for a complete reimagining, like the Coens did with O Brother, Where Art Thou? You can also just do a piece of the story. That’s the case with The Return, a film that concerns itself with the end section of The Odyssey, the moment when Odysseus comes home after 20 years. It's always been one of the weirder parts of the story. In the original Homeric epic, Odysseus and the Greeks have spent 10 years fighting the Battle of Troy. Odysseus comes up with the Trojan Horse ploy and ends the war and he and his men sail home to Ithaca, but because he angered Poseidon, his return took another 10 years. Naturally, Odysseus is presumed dead, and so a number of suitors arrive to Ithaca in the hopes of winning the hand of Penelope, Odysseus’ presumed widow. She delays them through various methods waiting for her husband’s return and seemingly oblivious to the abuse that the suitors are piling on her son, Telemachus.
In The Return, we’re going to start with Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) arriving back on Ithaca, naked, alone, and shipwrecked. His 10-year journey has killed all of his men. He returns to an island that is on the brink of disaster. The many suitors for Penelope (Juliette Binoche) are destroying the island, eating everything like a pack of locusts. They are also at the end of their patience, desperate for her to make a decision.
A huge part of the movie consists of Odysseus discovering just how much these “visitors” have destroyed his island home. Odysseus is haunted by what happened in the war in Troy, especially the destruction of the city and his part in the deaths of thousands of innocents. Then, of course, there is the 10-year return journey and the loss of all of his men. For her part, Penelope tells the suitors that she will choose one of them when she finishes weaving her wedding gown. To delay them, she tears out the weaving she does every night.
The Return does a good job of depicting all of this. It’s quite slow and very concerned with all of the various suitors wanting to eliminate Telemachus (Charlie Plummer). The problem is that it brings up the inherent problem with the story. No matter how well this is depicted and acted, you’re simply not going to get around the fact that there’s a plot hole the size of, well, a Trojan Horse in the source material.
That hole is the fact that no one recognizes Odysseus. You could argue that 20 years changes a man, of course, and Telemachus, born just after Odysseus left for the Trojan War can be forgiven for not recognizing his father. The suitors, of course, even if they recognized Odysseus, have a vested interest in not doing so. But no one else figures it out. His old nurse (Angela Molina) does eventually by recognizing a scar on his leg. But in his meeting with Penelope, she not only doesn’t immediately recognize her husband, she doesn’t even recognize his voice.
The key moment in the original story is the same key moment in the movie. Finally confronted by suitors who have discovered the fact that she pulls out all of her weaving every night, Penelope is forced to make a choice. She does so by telling all of the men that her husband was capable of stringing a particular bow and firing an arrow through a hole in a dozen axe heads. The man who can accomplish this feat will be her new husband (and if you want a re-creation of this, it’s the title card for any movie made by TSG).
Honestly, there’s nothing particularly wrong with The Return aside from the fact that it’s not very interesting. It’s slow, and if you know the story, the ending is one that you’re waiting to see happen. Odysseus having a huge existential crisis is an interesting choice and one that makes a lot of sense. I never really felt that engaged by it. Everyone seems very ready and willing to forgive Odysseus for his 20 year absence, including the seven years he spent hanging out with Calypso or the year he spent with Circe.
I wanted to like this, but the main thing it does is demonstrate just how weird this part of the story actually is.
Why to watch The Return: It really digs in to just how messed up the end of The Odyssey really is.
Why not to watch: When you actually see the story, there are pieces that don’t really make sense.
