When Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) tells his wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche) in The Return that she couldn’t possibly understand what he went through in the two decades they were apart, you have to wonder what exactly he means in this case. Is it the burdens of war and meaningless bloodshed, which form the core of Uberto Pasolini’s adaptation of the last third of The Odyssey? Or does he mean, you know, the nymphs, cannibals, sirens, sea monsters etc etc?
There are no gods or monsters in Pasolini’s film, which the producer-turned-filmmaker (and nephew of the great director Luchino Visconti) co-wrote with John Collee and Edward Bond. It opts for material realism (though not historical, since the Bronze Age people of Ithaca appear to be living in what looks to be a medieval fort). Yet plausibility is not the same as emotional veracity. And not only does The Return root out any and all mentions of the supernatural, but it does away with the emotions that power what is one of the most influential yet sparingly adapted stories in existence.
