The Return
Two brothers' long-absent father returns without explanation and takes them on a tense journey to a remote island.
renews the grand tradition of Russian cinematic mysticism epitomized by Andrei Tarkovsky
A father who vanished more than ten years earlier is suddenly back, asleep in the family home, and his two sons barely know him. Andrei, the elder, wants to trust him; Ivan, the younger, stays wary. Within a day the man drives them out of town on a fishing trip that keeps extending toward a bleak northern island, his purpose unspoken.
Reviewers greeted it as an assured first feature, singling out Mikhail Krichman's cold, silvered photography and a pace that withholds far more than it reveals. Several read the father less as a character than as a question the film declines to answer. The Venice jury gave it the Golden Lion, an emphatic welcome for a debut.
For a psychodynamic clinician the material is direct: an absent father who returns without apology, the fear and longing he stirs in each son differently, and two boys testing whether his authority can be trusted or merely endured. The brothers' split responses, one appeasing and one openly defiant, make a study in how children negotiate a parent who is at once wanted and frightening.
Director
Andrey Zvyagintsev
Andrey Zvyagintsev (born 1964) is a Russian film director. His work returns repeatedly to the absent or returning father, to the pressure of authority, and to the family set against the Russian state. He often places private grief inside institutions that fail the people caught in them. His debut feature, The Return (2003), follows two boys whose father reappears after a long absence; it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Later films include Leviathan and Loveless.
Details
- 2003
- 105 min
- Russia
- Russian
- Film
- Venice Golden Lion 2003 won; Venice Luigi De Laurentiis Award for a debut film 2003 won