The Return

A film about the homecoming of Odysseus. After twenty years a man is washed up on the shore of Ithaca. He is exhausted, wounded, and tells nobody who he is. The man is Odysseus, the only one to come back from the war. Things on the island are bad. Penelope has waited for years and the palace is full of men who want her to marry. Their son Telemachus believes his father is dead and wants his mother to decide. The film's choice is to take the gods out of the myth. There is no magic, no prophecy, no divine intervention. The narrative looks at three people: the man who returns, the woman who waited and the child who grew up in between. Odysseus is not presented as a hero either. He cannot carry what he did in the war, and it is implied that he may have had a reason for delaying his return. The narrative is calm and hard; violence appears in few scenes and is heavy when it does. Ralph Fiennes plays Odysseus and Juliette Binoche plays Penelope; the two acted together again after many years. Charlie Plummer plays Telemachus. Uberto Pasolini directed. It was shot in Greece. A strong example for anyone who likes adaptations of myth and restrained storytelling. For a viewer expecting an epic, the film is unshowy and there is no battle scene.