Not counting Brad Pitt’s breastplate-buster Troy, Homer hasn’t exactly been a go-to inspiration for Hollywood. That’s unlikely to change with Uberto Pasolini’s The Return, a handsome but dour take on the last chapters of The Odyssey.
Talking of handsome but dour, Ralph Fiennes’ Odysseus belatedly washes ashore on his homeland of Ithaca. Here, his queen Penelope (Juliette Binoche) is besieged by thuggish suitors who threaten his son, Telemachus (Charlie Plummer) with a grisly end if she keeps them waiting much longer.
Most of the plot points are familiar from half-remembered school lessons. Unrecognised by all, except for his dog, the unfortunately named Argos, Odysseus arrives disguised as a broken beggar. This disguise is, in fact, not far from the truth. He is a veteran of bloody battles and suffers from a lingering PTSD, unsure of whether he is worthy to return home without his men. Is he even really the king? Meanwhile, Penelope weaves during the day and unweaves at night – though her suitors are beginning to suspect her delaying tactics, and one of them, Antinous (Marwan Kenzari), is becoming silkily persuasive. After all, what future does she face?
A more daring director would have turned this into Ralph Fiennes’ Taken
The sun beats down and everyone walks around in those odd Greek togas, which always look like they’re slipping off the shoulder. As one of the finest screen actors alive, Fiennes is fantastic and the film is worth a watch purely for his performance. At the hands of a more daring director, this could have been his Taken, as his lust for revenge begins to remind him of the violent man he actually is. His gaze is the very definition of a slow burn that is going to build to a violence and finally all-out massacre.
It’s also a real pleasure to see a reunion between Binoche and Fiennes – their third following Wuthering Heights (1992) and The English Patient (1997) – although the story dictates that they share minimal screen time. Other actors snarl and mutter with requisite seriousness, but it is difficult, despite cinematographer Marius Panduru’s lovely camerawork, to believe these people live in these places.
When the moment of truth comes, the violence is bloody without being excessive; lacking in the kind of madness that leads to catharsis. Ultimately, it’s a film that is too respectful of its source, while not getting to the bloody heart of its subject.
In US theaters Dec 6.