37/46
After 20 years, Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca to find his wife captured by suitors vying for the title of king and his son facing death at their hands. To reclaim his family and all he has lost, Odysseus must rediscover his strength… Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche have teamed up for the third time 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. Aiming to immerse the viewer in the multifactorial pain and suffering of Penelope and Odysseus during Odysseus’s return home to Ithaca, this treatise was considered a fairly systematic exploration of the challenges that many soldiers face upon returning from active duty, including PTSD and other mental health issues, reintegration into their former lives with family and society, and flashbacks of memories and pain they both experienced and caused, and the resulting internal change that is irreversible. The Return is driven by a brilliant cast that allows the viewer to experience this roller coaster ride on which the two key protagonists ride to significant heights, thanks to the unique and extraordinary perseverance of Penelope and Odysseus during this difficult time in their lives. and without each other’s support. In fact, the two are kept quite apart for most of the build-up, which only makes the catharsis stronger in the most intense, thriller-like later part of an otherwise slow-moving film. Fiennes brings his unique style of portraying suffering to this work – a great extension of his amazing skills from the adjacent depictions of pain and anguish in The Spider and The End of the Affair. Binoche could be fooled a little into feeling and hoping that these two will reconnect in the same way that they were close during The English Patient, and Pasolini uses this to build further tension in this work for those whose memories of The English Patient are vivid. This is a great and very relevant work that needs to be experienced!