30/30

After 20 years, Odysseus 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, Odysseus must rediscover his strength. Third time Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche have starred in a film together. 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 has sought to explore quite systematically the challenges that many soldiers encounter 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 that the two key protagonists ride to significant heights, the latter due 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 only makes the catharsis more powerful in the later more intense and thriller-like part of the otherwise slower-burning film. Fiennes brings his unique style of portraying suffering to this work, a great extension of his wonderful skills from his adjacent depictions 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 fooled into feeling and hoping that the two will reunite in much the same way they were close during The English Patient, and Pasolini exploits this to create further tension in this work for those whose memory of the English Patient is vivid. This is a great and very relevant work that must be experienced!

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