Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) returns to Ithaca, washed up on the shore and naked, twenty years after leading the armies in the Trojan War.  In his absence, his wife, Penelope (Juliette Binoche), has stayed faithful to her husband, refusing to remarry any of the various suitors who have made their offerings.  As life on the island continues to decline, the people are growing less forgiving on Penelope’s commitment to her presumed-to-be dead husband and begin to target her son, Telemachus (Charlie Plummer), to force her hand in marriage.  Odysseus, seeing the sorry state of his once-great nation, and feeling shame in the trials his absence has forced his family to endure as well as losing the entirety of the Ithacan army hides his identity, but he is not so easily forgotten. 

Uberto Pasolini directs The Return, an adaptation of the final section of Homer’s Odyssey, here written by John Collee, Edward Bond, and Pasolini.  The film premiered at the 2024 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival and was given a limited theatrical release later that same year by Bleecker Street.  Running 116 minutes, the film is slow to reveal itself and bypasses many of the more heroic and exciting aspects of the prolific Greek myth, focusing instead on Odysseus the man; a man with fears and regrets as he reconciles the cost of his victories in battle against the toll that those same exploits which brough him eternal glory took on his family. 

Taking this more meditative approach allows the film to spread out from providing spectacle as any iteration of Homer’s work on film tends to take, and instead wisely chooses to be an acting showcase for Fiennes and Binoche.  The story involves many of the same broad setups and scenarios of mistaken identity that William Shakespeare often employed to great effect in any number of his marriage comedies, but Pasolini et al. drain any bit of comic relief from their rendition of this tale, instead playing each reveal like seeing the photograph of a long-lost relative and the flood of competing poignant emotions of love and loss that follow.  It has all of the emotional beats of a ghost story, but the “twist” is that the ghost is very much still among the living and has not passed on, yet even that sets up certain narrative expectations that The Return is simply not looking to engage with. 

That is not to say that the film is sent out to pasture as it chronicles one of Greece’s great heroes in his twilight years.  There is a thrilling chase across the island, allowing Marius Panduru to capture some of the tropical beauty with his lens instead of just the dusty stone parapets lit with candlelight.  As Odysseus flees from an angry mob with his son in tow, they take shelter behind a waterfall and then make their way up the cliffside to the top of a mountain overlooking the island.  Here, the script challenges Plummer to go head-to-head with Fiennes as well as delivering one of the major narrative cruxes on which the film hinges.  He unleashes the pent up rage of a boy who grew up never having meaningfully met his father, yet with every step he took, he was compared to this great man who, in Telemachus’ eyes, has done nothing of merit and abandoned his home, his people, and his family. 

The film culminates in the King reclaiming his throne as Penelope, with her back against the wall from the mob of eager suitors and a sneaking suspicion about the true identity of this washed up hermit who has cause quite a commotion on the island, makes a final offer to wed whomever can shoot an arrow from her husband’s bow through the holes on a series of axe heads.  The near impossible task is taken up by the still-disheveled Odysseus who not only manages to sting the bow, but completes the challenge, though the suitors call foul before he can reunite with his wife.  The result is a bloody battle in which all the traitorous suitors meet their end, including Antinous (Marwan Kenzari) who is slain by Telemachus against his parents’ wish to see mercy.  The Return does not treat this crossing of the Rubicon lightly, but neither does it give it the attention that such a shift in character deserves; though to be fair both Odyssey and The Return are Odysseus’ stories. 

It would be unfair to the litany of artists behind The Return to write it off simply as a glorified acting exercise, but it undeniably comes across as an esoteric passion project.  Giuliano Pannuti’s production design takes a much more of-the-earth sense as opposed to the more ethereal approach taken by Luigi Scaccianoce and Dante Ferretti as they worked under the direction of Pier Paolo Pasolini – no relation – in bringing to screen the various titles in his Greek Tragedy cycle.  Sergio Ballo’s costumes similarly match the dusty, sunbaked hues of Pannuti’s realization of this ancient island, and while audiences can almost feel the scratch of burlap or the sweat under straps of leather on one’s skin while watching this drama unfold in the unrelenting heat, Ballo always works to define the characters how he can through their use of primitive clothing and dyes. Binoche’s Penelope is always immaculate, but it is the blue which he chooses to wrap Telemachus that is most striking, foreshadowing the blue of the seas which he will set sail on at the end of the film, following one last time in his father’s footsteps.