There are no sirens, cyclops or six-headed monsters in Uberto Pasolini’s adaptation of The Odyssey. His film, The Return, skips most of the great big adventure at sea from Homer’s epic poem, which was previously translated to the big screen in 1955’s Ulysses starring Kirk Douglas (and the Coen brothers’ Oh, Brother Where Art Thou?).
Instead, Pasolini’s handsome, sombre and meditative take homes in on Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche’s faces. The camera loves them. It barely leaves them, watching for the light from the setting sun or crackling fire as it searches across their weary brows or sullen cheeks, or when a painterly circle of smoke orbits their heads like thrones.
