By Sandra Hall
THE RETURN ★★★★
(M), 116 minutes
In Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey, the gods and goddesses love tinkering with human lives, competing with one another by backing their mortal favourites as if betting on a horse race.
The Return, Uberto Pasolini’s adaptation of The Odyssey’s closing episode, does away with all that. The Olympians make no appearance here. Odysseus and his wife, Penelope, are on their own, handling praise, blame and everything in between, and such is Homer’s power as a storyteller, it doesn’t matter a bit.
Ralph Fiennes says he wanted to make his body look like a piece of old rope. He succeeded.
If anything, it all seems more plausible without the gods. Pasolini has made sure of that with his vision of Ithaca, Odysseus’s rugged island homeland. There is no difficulty in believing the action is taking place more than 3000 years ago. The cold, stone castle at the centre of events rises from a craggy slope as if it’s sprung up from the earth itself.
And Ralph Fiennes’ Odysseus is looking just as weathered. When first glimpsed, he’s lying naked and unconscious on the shore, washed up after a shipwreck that killed the few men he brought back from the Trojan War.
Fiennes, who’s 62, has talked of his diet and exercise regimen before the shoot, saying he wanted his body to resemble a piece of old rope, and it worked. He’s so gaunt you can see the outline of every vein and sinew.
Juliette Binoche is Penelope, waiting for her husband to return as the suitors gather around her.
It’s no wonder his wife, Penelope, takes time to recognise him. She’s played by Juliette Binoche, whose performance is a study in repressed emotion. Her husband has been away for 20 years, and she’s close to breaking point, weary of the squabbling suitors camping in her palace while they wait for her to decide which one she’ll marry.
Only Antinous (Marwan Kenzari) wants her for herself. The rest want the kingdom. And her son, Telemachus (Charlie Plummer), isn’t much help. Certain his father is dead and desperate to escape, he’s lapsed into a permanent sulk.
The script, co-written by John Collee (Master and Commander), keeps us guessing while Odysseus, posing as a beggar, decides how he’s going to deal with the loathsome suitors. Once he’s on the road to retribution, however, things accelerate at top speed.
Even if you know what’s coming, the climax is a thriller as those closest to him realise who he is and the havoc he’s still capable of creating.
But if his old warrior instincts are still intact, there’s a high price to pay. With the poignancy of the denouement, you learn just how much self-loathing he’s harbouring. He’s guilty over the killing he’s done, but he’s even more ashamed of surviving when his men have not.
It’s a marvellous performance by Fiennes – measured out in stealthy silences and terse admissions, and Binoche matches him all the way.
The Return is released in cinemas on March 20
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