One of the finest films I’ve seen recently is The Return, starring Ralph Fiennes as the Ancient Greek hero, Odysseus, and Juliette Binoche as his wife, Penelope. It’s the story of Homer’s Odyssey from the moment Odysseus finally washes up on the shore of Ithaca after ten years of war against the Trojans and ten years of bother and palaver as he tried to find his way home. Not one of the brave men he took with him to the war has survived so it’s assumed that Odysseus is at the bottom of the sea too. Or shacked up with a gorgeous ‘love goddess’ on an island somewhere. So, his home is besieged by ‘suitors’, each one hoping to step up and marry Odysseus’s wife, thereby helping himself to the marital bed, home and kingdom.
This is one of the original hero/warrior stories, handled exquisitely. (Here is my blogpost about how Homer breaks the Quest hero mould, while setting the standard.) The casting in The Return could not be better, not least in Charlie Plummer as Telemachus, the son of Odysseus and Penelope who was a baby when his father left for war and now, around 20, doesn’t know whether to save his mother or loathe her, or to head off on his own quest to locate his father. The beauty of this story is how it balances the pain of all three characters and this film captures that faithfully. There’s also the ancient pleasure, if you know The Odyssey at all, of seeing a familiar story beautifully retold.
My only quibble is that, as usual these days, the gods are left out. I particularly miss Athena, Odysseus’s goddess-champion, who flirts and banters with him, and crucially appears now and again with the deft touch of a Fairy Godmother to disguise him either as a beggar or his muscly, gorgeous younger self. With her merry sense of eternity, that ultimately human life is a game, she lifts the tone of the whole thing out of sepia tragedy each time she appears. Similarly, the film is rather po-faced in the interactions between Odysseus and Penelope. Homer’s Penelope can be as playful and nimble-minded as her husband and it’s a shame not to see the jousts in their conversations, not least because it shows us how they suit each other so well. How marriage itself is something integrally different from any other relationship. As I’ve said in a post about love stories, how not even a ‘love goddess’ like Calypso could match the fine pleasures of that kind of marriage of minds.
The Return is excellent, however, and has joined the pile of my favourite films.
Homer has cropped up in my blogposts over the years. Here are his ten top storytelling tips again:
For an excellent translation in readable English of this part of The Odyssey, there’s Enitharmon’s The Bending of the Bow by Neil Curry. For the full length Odyssey, Emily Wilson’s version is superb, as is poet Simon Armitage’s. (It’s Armitage, incidentally, who addresses Odysseus’s relationship with Calypso head on and describes him as her sex-slave.) And Nicolson’s The Mighty Dead is still an important, really enjoyable read around anything to do with Homer.
Happy writing!
Rosie Johnston 