43/50
After 20 years, Ulysses finally returns to Ithaca, where he finds his wife held captive by suitors vying to become king and his son facing death at their hands. To win back his family and all he has lost, Ulysses must rediscover his strength. This is the third time Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche have starred together in a film. They previously worked together in Wuthering Heights (1992) and The English Patient (1996). Penelope: How can men find their way to war but not their way home? Odysseus: For some, war becomes home… Focused on immersing the viewer in the multi-factorial pain and suffering of Penelope and Odysseus during Odysseus’ homecoming to Ithaca, this treatise felt it explored quite systematically the challenges that many soldiers face upon returning from active service, including PTSD and other mental health issues, reintegration into their former life with family and society, and flashbacks of memories and pain both endured and inflicted, and the resulting inner change that is irreversible. The Return is fueled by a great choice of cast to allow the viewer to experience this rollercoaster ride that the two key protagonists reach to significant heights, the latter thanks to the unique and particular resilience of Penelope and Odysseus at this difficult time in their lives, and without each other’s support. In fact both are kept quite apart for much of the build-up, which makes the catharsis more powerful only in the later more intense, thriller-like part of the otherwise slow-burning film. Fiennes brings his unique style of portraying suffering to this work – a great extension of his wonderful skills derived from his adjacent portrayals of pain and anguish in Spider and The End of the Affair. Binoche is the perfect choice for Penelope as the viewer might be somewhat led to feel and hope that the two will be reunited in much the same way they were close in The English Patient, and Pasolini uses this to create further tension in this work for those whose memories of the English Patient are vivid. This is a fantastic and very relevant work that must be experienced!
