The Return
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Movie Reviews of The Return
Movie Review: Brilliantly Speculative Cinema of Father's Return...
Summary: 5 Stars
Communication brings people closer, as shared information removes obstacles such as guessing and assumptions. For example, if a person says, "I am scared." People know that the person is scared and it offers an opportunity for people to help the person overcome the fear in one way or another. Thus, communication also becomes the foundation upon, which education and enlightenment rest. If communication perished, enlightenment and knowledge would see their final days because the next generation would never receive the information from previous generations. This displays why communication and why language is so essential for human existence. The Return illustrates a returning father and his inability to communicate, which will leave the audience in a cerebral no man's land guessing and concocting their own assumptions.
The director Andrei Zvyagintsev opens the film by a pier where a large diving tower is located. Some young teenagers are jumping from the tower while Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov), one of the younger kids, does not jump as her fears height. His friends and his older brother Andrey (Vladimir Garin) leave him on top of the diving tower whimpering in fear while the cold sea breeze brushes his body. This leads to a situation where some of Ivan's friends call him a coward, which he denies. Ivan ends up in fight with his brother, and he runs home to tell his mother while she simply states, "Don't wake your father."
Flabbergasted the two boys look at their mother, when she says that their father (Konstantin Lavronenko) is at home. These two boys have not seen their father for over a decade, and now he has returned for whatever reason. The first thing the father has decided to do is to take the two boys on a fishing trip; however, the trip turns out to be something completely different than what the kids had in mind.
Throughout the trip, the father is abusive and rough with Ivan and Andrey. However, besides this the audience has to follow a trail of suggestive ideas, which leaves the viewer with mere assumptions. Several reviews have pinpointed this speculative atmosphere in the film that the father in the film generates through his persona, as he never provides a motive to his actions. Some reviews have suggested that he is a crook out to recover some old loot while others have proposed that the father tries to teach his two sons to become men, as their upbringing has lacked a male role model. It does not really matter what the audience thinks, as all ideas can be true. What seems to matter is the father's inability to communicate with his two sons, as he often leaves them confused, hurt, and withdrawn.
Cleverly, Zvyagintsev uses the mise-en-scene in the film, which helps create the tentative milieu. The many majestic shots expand the viewer's mind in several directions, as they provide the audience an opportunity to ponder the insignificance of the character's identity. This enhances the ominous tension shaped between the children and the father, which might lead the audience's mind in a negative and darker direction of the father's intentions. The camera filter also plays an important role in producing a negative atmosphere, as it boosts the emotional distance between the father and the boys.
The highly speculative atmosphere that Andrei Zvyagintsev generates through his film suggests the notion of poor communication and highlights the importance of good communication. Communication is also an essential part of cinema, as cinema is visual storytelling that can use dialogue and other auditory signals to promote a story. Regardless of the story's outcome, the audience learns a threefold lesson through the film about the importance of language and communication. The most obvious lesson is in regards to the boys' confusion and pain in the story due to the father's poor communication. The second lesson that Zvyagintsev teaches the audience is through the viewer's own assumptions and guesses based on the lack of information. The final lesson of communication that the film provides is in regards to our short existence on earth, which suggests that one should seize the day when the chance presents itself. Ultimately, the audience can reflect over the pictures at the end in the film, as these images provide several different ideas. This is the beauty of art, as it leaves the audience with their own interpretations and thoughts, which maybe could lead to a revelation of some sort helping people with proper communication.
Movie Review: Dread and Tranquillity
Summary: 5 Stars
I had recently been wondering about the foreign independent films and this particular film had caught my eye. My interest started after watching many other American films, but I savoured for a different perspective in story telling and filmmaking. The Houston Museum of Fine Art's Film Theatre was the place to go to watch the tonight's last premiere of the film; I was determined to watch it and invited my friends.
The Return Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev
Film review by Monserrat Martinez
September 5, 2004
The film opens with young Russian boys daring each other to jump off the tower into the cold lake. The last of the boys decided not to jump and is left alone by his brother and calls him "chicken".
The two fatherless brothers from a Russian town, Andrei (Vladimir Garin) and Vanya (Ivan Dobronravov), are engaged in a brotherly fight the next day and chase after each other to tell their mother. They then learn of their father's (Konstantin Lavronenko) sudden return home after twelve years.
The mysterious father takes his sons to a fishing trip and their mother reluctantly accepts them to go with their father. Andrei, the oldest, is willing to please his father and dearly calls him "papa" while Vanya, the youngest and most stubborn, resents his father's return. The trip engages in different confrontations between the father and his sons as well as between the brothers. We learn of Andrei's weakness in peer pressure and Vanya's rebel character. The viewer's immediately recognize the father's strong character and violent punishments, but a "godlike" figure to the boys. Andrei says to his brother "did you see him. He is big, he probably works out" during their last night before leaving for the trip.
The many confrontations between Vanya and his father conveys the "toughen up" and military background of the father and ways of punishing his rebel son Vanya - leaving him alone in the rain with the fishing rods. Later on the "favoured" son, Andrei is physically abused by banging his son's face on the car during the car trouble.
The climatic point of the film starts with Vanya's grand plan to steal his father's knife and confession to Andrei of his feelings and hatred towards their father. A disaster is bound to happen, as the day gets darker and windy. (A tragic recently happened to the young actor Vladimir Garin just after finishing the film when he had drowned in a swimming accident similar to the beginning of the film.)
Pleasing to the eye as the landscape of Russia, during the spring, blooms in the father-son trip. Visualizing the serene images of the boys' faces during the calm waters to their stern faces during the stormy weather.
Somehow Vanya's decisiveness to prove his courage by climbing up the tower and the fear in his father for his son's safety creeps an uncomfortable thrill to the viewers. The morose consequences change the young boys' character and personality.
The 39-year-old Russian director's, Mr. Zvyagintsev, creation to demonstrate the moving tension and simplicity of his characters evokes a psychological thrill. There are some biblical metaphors or inferences, but that is to judge only to the viewer's own opinion. The sacred relationship between father and son eludes the mysterious persona of the father's mission to get the box and taking his innocent sons with him arose more mystery. "The Return" completes itself as a wonderful film filled with human actions with reasonable thoughts. A new talent has arrived from this independent Russian film.
Movie Review: Haunting...
Summary: 5 Stars
I was wondering how I could start this review, and it dawned on me that the best way to convey the meaning this film has for me is to simply state, matter-of-factly, just what it is about this moving that touches me. Fatherhood. Yes, being a father myself, I am always drawn to films that express the varying degrees of fatherhood; from the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly. 2003 was one of those years that stands out for me in the way the fatherly role was exposed and elaborated on. Some of my favorite films from that year took the time to explore facets of this `character'. `In America', `Master and Commander' (obviously from a symbolic way), `Finding Nemo', `Pieces of April', `Big Fish'; all of them reach that part of me very deeply.
Of them all, this is by far my favorite.
"Who's sleeping?"
This Russian film details a week long trip taken by two young boys and their long lost father. After a twelve year absence, he returns without warning and decides to take his sons fishing. The trip, littered with ambiguities, fights, questions and tragedy, will forever change young Andrei and Ivan (often referred to as Vanya). Young Ivan is the most affected, both before and after the trip, as he struggles with his own perception of this man he (begrudgingly) calls `father'.
"There's all kinds of grown-ups."
What I found so beautifully moving about this film is that it never once tried to force our emotions. We are presented with a scenario, and the people involved push us in all different directions, but in the end it is left up to us to decide just how we feel about the individuals involved. By shying away from an easy answer (there has been a lot of talk about the ending being too ambiguous, but for me the ambiguity is what makes this film so poignant) a broader range of emotional entitlement is allowed. We can see the shades of pain that come from loss, no matter how much we know or don't know about a person. Ivan is so clueless as to who his father truly is, but his anger, frustration, resentment and malice is all wrapped up in an undeniable love and affection. He wants so badly to understand, but he fervently refuses to try.
"With our little hands."
Presenting to the audience an honest and emotionally gripping exploration of that bond between father and son, `Vozvrashchenie' nails everything needed to cement itself in the mind of the audience. The flawless performances of the three leads are only illuminated by the beautiful camera work (the gritty realism brought to the stunning cinematography is hauntingly effective) and the poignant and provocative script. Each emotion is felt long after the scene has ended.
"Go get the ax."
Oh, and just a little piece of advice; don't worry so much about what is IN the box, focus on what the box represents.
Movie Review: A Powerfully Strong Russian Morality Play
Summary: 5 Stars
THE RETURN is one of the most beautifully photographed, eloquent films about the influence of fragmented families this reviewer has ever seen. Directed with extraordinary, understated, and sensitive perfection by Andrei Zvyagintsev, THE RETURN is a sweeping yet quiet epic story of a small family in Russia, fragmented by the father's desertion of them, and how the two boys and their mother cope with life alone and then with the unexpected arrival of the father after twelve years' absence.
Andrei (Vladimir Garin) is the older brother who runs with a gang that one day challenges his younger brother Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) to follow their game of jumping off a rickety tower into the lake below. Unable to face the fear of dying, Ivan remains on the perilous tower while his 'friends' leave the 'coward' behind. Eventually Ivan's mother (the beautiful and sensitive Natalya Vdovina) comes to fetch him and take him home to safety, despite Ivan's remaining feelings of rejection.
Abruptly, the boys return home on an average day to discover their mother's warning to be quiet so as not to awake their sleeping father (Konstantin Lavronenko) who has been gone for the important bonding years in the boys' lives. Once awake the father menacingly tells the boys he will take them on a fishing trip. Andrei (obviously out of the need to be loved by a father) is eager: Ivan (who fears the 'father' whom he knows only form old photographs) is wary and nearly refuses to go. But go they do, and begin a few days of quiet discovery that their long absent father is a creature to be feared.
The three set camp and build a boat to take out to an island. What happens on this misadventure is horrifyingly tragic and the boys are left to cope with fate, wholly on their own for survival. And the film simply ends.
There is much more to the simple story than meets the eye (even though the eye is romanced with some of the most evocative, minimalist, atmospheric photography of a lake in Siberia by cinematographer Mikhail Krichman). Filial love or lack of same, sibling love, death, coming of age, coping with seemingly impossible ventures, etc fill every frame. This is one of the most penetratingly cogent films made. The acting is of the highest order. The musical score by Andrei Dergachyov quietly sets the mood to perfection. It is sad to realize that the young actor Vladimir Garin (Andrei) drowned in an accident too similar to the diving scene that opens this film. This event makes this film an even more powerful mood piece. Highly Recommended.
Grady Harp
Movie Review: Resonates long afterwards
Summary: 5 Stars
This film's power is revealed in the contrast between the events as they play out and the questions generated by the enigmatic final moments. It worked firstly as a mysterious, psychological drama, but once the film had ended, it fit the definition of the term allegory perfectly.
"The Return" makes a compelling case in favor of a poetically complex narrative over the expectations of 'The Hollywood Ending', where life eventually makes some kind of sense. The absence of a father can create a psychological 'presence' for the family, both seen and felt in the emotional interaction of the children. This complex, yet all too human condition is played out here, not as a narrative sleight of hand (The Sixth Sense) but rather as film poetry. Life's hardest truths sit like a stone in the mouth and won't be broken down easily. The characters in this film seem to be struggling with the absence of their father or husband, but doing so with him present.
Visual cues which seem to lead to a metaphorical reading of what's happening are scattered throughout the film. For example, when the the boys see their sleeping father for the first time, he's viewed as Andrea Mantegna's "Dead Christ". The boys dash upstairs immediately afterwords to see if he looks like their father from an old photo, loosely placed in an old book of engravings - on the page where the angel stays Abraham's hand before he sacrifices his son. Then there is the repeated image of the tower, seeming to both foreshadow and justify a fear of death for the youngest brother. And the mysterious journey to an island, the significance of which changes them all. These don't appear as kitsch cues (as in, "this image stands for this specific idea.") but appear as symbols whose meaning is more poetic than literal. They're tied to the story and can't be extracted cleanly. In true Tarkovskian form the filmmaker has bled his symbols of specific reference and made them about the characters.
And there's the profoundly enigmatic manner of the father, existing for the two brothers in terms of curt preoccupation, edicts, veiled threats, detachment and blunt instruction. He could very well not be there. This causes both boys to respond to him with a mix of outrage, incredulity and bitterness.
Its a rare film, well worth seeing, if for no other reason than to marvel at the elegiac force of the story, the photography and at the performances that the director managed to coax from his actors. Both the boys in particular are astonishingly subtle. Highly recommended.