Directed by Uberto Pasolini (UK, 2024). NZ International Film Festival, 2024; general release in December. Reviewed by Paul Tankard

This re-telling of Homer’s epic The Odyssey omits all the legendary adventures of Odysseus and his men — the Cyclops, the lotus-eaters, Circe, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis — and skips straight to Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) washing up on the shores of Ithaca: older, battle-scarred, naked and alone.

When Odysseus left for Troy he left behind his wife, Penelope (Juliette Binoche) and infant son, Telemachus. For 20 years they have not known if he was alive or dead. The Odysseus who returns is unrecognisable, and assumes the guise of a beggar while he susses out how things are.

On Ithaca, community life, authority and productive labour have all broken down. Penelope shelters in her crumbling court, besieged by dozens of suitors who want to step into Odysseus’s roles as king and husband. Telemachus, no longer a child (Charlie Plummer), is now seen by the suitors as a potential threat to their ambitions.

This is the set-up. But much less than this happens on screen. Fiennes is not Homer’s “wily Odysseus,” but a tired and bewildered hero, like a washed-up boxer. For much of the film he is almost non-verbal — Fiennes’s script would hardly take up an A4 page — and he’s clearly suffering from modern conditions like survivor guilt or male menopause or PTSD, or similar.

Odysseus knows that he is not returning to his people as a hero. Apart from lingering views of the stunning landscape, viewers are asked to watch the two leads as, in silence, they grapple with (we presume) such questions as: Was Odysseus right to go away? Is he right to return? Can he and should he retain the kingship, or his wife? Does Penelope, for all her artful deflecting of the suitors, even want him?

These questions are there or are implied in Homer. Odysseus could have returned to a red carpet and a ticker-tape parade. But as we know from Tolkien’s “Scouring of the Shire” and Jordan Peterson telling young men to tidy their rooms, you can be a storied hero, fighting other people’s picturesque battles, at war or in online games, and still have to confront the mess at home. 

Odysseus does confront his mess at home, and the final 20 rather gruesome minutes of The Return won’t surprise anyone. This is a plausible and compelling reading of The Odyssey, but perhaps some of the Cyclops and Circe would have made a more gripping film.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 299 December 2024: 28