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Film Review — The Return
Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche are superb in Uberto Pasolini’s stripped-down take on the last bit of The Odyssey
Next year, we’re in for a spectacular treat, courtesy of Christopher Nolan’s mega-budget adaptation of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. Greek mythology aficionados and Nolanites will drool at retina-scorching IMAX vistas of seafaring adventures featuring vengeful gods, sirens, and monsters. Academics and non-Nolanites will doubtless have their obligatory (and probably joyless) “hot takes” (if you’ll forgive my use of an obscenity), but barring an act of God, this one is going to be massive. Blocks will doubtless be busted.
In the meantime, those who can’t wait to scratch their Greek mythology itch may want to check out The Return, which I belatedly caught up with at the cinema last night. It’s a small-scale but compelling adaptation of the last bit of The Odyssey, once Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) winds up washed up on his home island of Ithaca. He’s a scarred, traumatised, haunted man, rendered unrecognisable as King and believed to be a tramp by locals. That’s what the Trojan wars and several years at sea after irking Poseidon do to a man.
Odysseus wants to rejoin his beloved Queen Penelope (Juliette Binoche) and get to know the son he never met, Telemachus…
