Last spring, I had to teach The Iliad in my class. It’s not my favorite work by Homer, but I made an effort to also read The Odyssey, which I like much better, and then just for good measure, The Aeneid. What I prefer about The Odyssey is that it has an obvious central character with a plot goal while it takes a while for The Iliad‘s plot and such to become more obvious to a newcomer. I will admit that The Iliad grew on me with a second and third reading, but I still much prefer The Odyssey.
When I saw a trailer for a new cinematic version with Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as Penelope, I pretty much knew what I was seeing when that hit theaters opening weekend.
It’s been twenty years since Odysseus, King of Ithica, left for the Trojan War with all the best men of the kingdom. Within the last year, a mob of suitors have arrived at his palace to woo his presumed widow Penelope while Telemachus (Charlie Plummer), the son that Odysseus basically never knew, is getting mighty tired of what’s been happening as these boorish men eat all the food that that want and screw the servant girls without anyone being able to do much about it. Sure, ringleader Antinous (Marwan Kenzari) may pretend to be more civilized than the others, but he’s not really fooling anyone in the end. These men just want Penelope to choose one of them, but she says she won’t until she finishes a shroud for Odysseus’s elderly father.
However, Odysseus has also just returned to Ithica, if barely, as his battered, naked, defenseless body washes up on the shore. He seems a bit out of it at first, no one seems to recognize him, and he doesn’t seem inclined to talk about where he came from aside from to say he fought the Trojans. He’s hardly the man anyone is expecting, but he’s going to have to become that person if he wants to save Ithica. But the better question is whether or not he can. He’s not a young man. He’s been beaten down by life. He doesn’t even seem capable of speech at first. Meanwhile, Penelope’s hardly just the faithful wife as her bigger worry is keeping her now-adult son alive. But in the end, people have roles to fulfill. That could mean a lot of trouble for a lot of people.
First off, while The Return is very faithful to Homer’s retelling of The Odyssey, the movie tells the story without any of the supernatural and fantastic elements involved. The Greek gods aren’t even evoked. Odysseus goes around unrecognized as much as he does because Athena makes him so. He’s just a broken old man who’s been gone a long time. Likewise, Penelope is probably given more personality and characterization than any version of her I have ever seen before. I have a hard time believing there’s never been a version of this story told from her perspective before, but I’ve personally never encountered one. Essentially, The Return is telling the story for two people, not two larger-than-life personas. What it comes down to for both is the roles that others, including Telemachus, expect both to play. Odysseus isn’t a scarred war veteran whose skills come from experience and not the gods who will swoop in and murder all the false suitors as soon as he walks through the door, and Penelope chafes at the fact that she must either be the faithful wife or the whore.
It helps that both Fiennes and Binoche are such expressive actors. Neither Odysseus nor Penelope are particularly talkative characters. Both are tired people following their respective experiences either at war or waiting at home, but the pair do a great deal of acting with just some quiet glances, something they pull off wonderfully in a way that only actors of their caliber and experience can expect to pull off. They also make the movie what it is. The script humanizes the figures from Homer’s work quite a bit, and I don’t think the movie would work at all without them. Odysseus’s guilt and Penelope’s anger come across quite well even if the two don’t say much, and they make the movie what it is.
Grade: A-
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