r The Return
Uberto Pasolini, Greece, Italy, 2024o
Twenty years after setting out for the Trojan War, Odysseus washes up on his home island of Ithaca, emaciated and unrecognised. The land lies in ruins; his wife Penelope is harassed by rowdy suitors who threaten to kill her son Telemachus. Scarred by his experiences, Odysseus is now but a shadow of the hero he once was. Now he must face up to his past.
Two years after its premiere and six months after Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, we can finally present this stripped-down version of Homer’s epic, which, despite a star-studded cast led by Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, never made it into Swiss cinemas. It reduces the original to its final act, in which Odysseus, after ten years of war and another ten of wandering, washes up on his native island of Ithaca as a stark-naked castaway.
Everything is stacked against the ageing warrior: in Troy, he killed indiscriminately; on his voyage home, he lost his entire crew; and, as his outraged son knows, he squandered seven years with another woman while his kingdom fell into decay and his wife was besieged by would-be successors.
Of all these legendary settings, Uberto Pasolini shows us only the remnants: Penelope lives in a ruined castle, her garments are little more than a few pieces of cloth, and her sole occupation is the endless weaving of a second wedding dress, a ruse to keep her suitors at bay. The latter are a nameless rabble of louts who roam the impoverished island, looting as they go. Only the natural landscape, filmed mainly on Corfu, retains its overwhelming beauty.
And what does the returning Odysseus do? He hesitates, hides away for what seems like an eternity, until he finally makes his way up to the castle, where he takes refuge in excuses before his battle-weary wife, who has yet to recognise him. Once she does, he lapses into silence when she confronts him about the women and children of Troy. Finally, when it comes to disposing of his rivals, the self-doubting hero succumbs to good old bloodlust.
Anyone who pares down a 3,000-year-old story this radically is bound to leave narrative gaps and loose ends. Yet Binoche and Fiennes lend the minimalist setting emotional depth through their undercurrents of sorrow and eloquent silences: two people turned inward, who have endured too much.
Only the pointlessly epic score and the ending, in which Penelope all but offers Odysseus a blanket pardon in exchange for a little joint trauma therapy, are something of a scandal. Otherwise, though, this is a genuine alternative to Nolan’s thunderous pomp.
Andreas Furler