Return is a subtle loss, a regret that cannot be either forgotten or embraced.

(Italo Calvino)

An audacious act of reinterpreting the Homeric myth, confronting one of the most well-known episodes in Western epic: Odysseus' return to Ithaca. Drawing from the classical material of the last ten books of the Odyssey, Pasolini does not simply narrate a tale of reconciliation, but shapes a work that renounces the grandiosity of mythology to focus on the human, private, and, in some ways, everyday drama. His version is no longer a vehicle for an epic journey among monsters and gods, but transforms into a reflection on the return itself, the weight of expectations, and the disenchantment of a generation that has stopped believing in myth.

A critical examination of the hero, a psychological and philosophical exploration of the heart of Odysseus, a man who now has nothing more to prove but is still called to reclaim his place in a society that no longer recognizes him. The director moves away from grand epic storytelling to make the figure of Odysseus a human being exhausted by war, marked by post-traumatic stress, incapable of feeling any longing for power or glory. Here, Odysseus is no longer the hero who yearns for battle, but the man irreversibly scarred by it. War, which should mark the end of his odyssey, is instead the thread that continues to separate him from his home, his family, and even his own identity.

Odysseus is a character who returns to Ithaca as if he were returning in exile, not to reclaim what is rightfully his, but to find a form of redemption, a peace that seems impossible to achieve. In a body hardened by exhaustion, he conveys the frustration of a hero who never had the time to stop fighting. The scene in which Odysseus kills the suitors is not the great vengeance of the myth, but an uncomfortable, almost passive staging that reduces the violence to an act of weariness, an unbearable necessity, so much so that the confrontation seems almost meaningless. The bloodshed is not a triumph but the testimony of a hero who, like a puppet, is forced to resume his role—not as a protagonist but as a mere executor of a fate he did not choose.

In this process, Odysseus also becomes an ambiguous figure, where his wisdom is never separate from his humanity, which is revealed in all its fragility. He is a man who must learn to recognize his own limitations, come to terms with fatality, and, at the same time, challenge the inevitability of fate. His return is not just an end, but a fulfillment of his inner journey. It is in his home that he truly faces himself—not through a return to a previous condition, but in the overcoming of what he once was, in the recognition that the essence of return is a constant change.

If Odysseus is the hero who has lost all epic drive, Penelope, portrayed with unexpected depth by Juliette Binoche, is the figure who embodies resistance. Her Penelope is not just the woman who waits, but a woman who fights against the conventions of her time, who despises war, violence, and the figure of the victorious hero, capable only of surviving incomprehensible horrors. Her struggle is that of someone who has learned to recognize the futility of war and its perpetual, ever-present influence in the life of every man. There is no longer the myth of absolute fidelity, but a clear-sighted awareness that even once the war is won, violence and destruction never cease to haunt human existence.

Pasolini's film closes on a specific note that does not celebrate physical return, but existential return, in a gesture that transcends the flesh and transforms into a communion of experiences and suffering. When Penelope cares for Odysseus, she does so not only with her body, but with her presence, with her ability to listen and accept all that he has brought with him—his stories and the invisible scars that the sea and time have carved into his skin. Their encounter is not a simple reunification but a gesture of mutual acceptance.

Each person’s story is inextricable from that of others, from the voices of those who came before them and those who will follow. It is the human community and its historical consciousness that form the foundation of that "return," which is never solely individual. Every Odysseus is, after all, a part of a larger whole, a single fragment of a narrative that challenges the linearity of time, returning to the individual the infinite desire to transcend, while always aware that such transcendence is always and only a fragment of what could be.

The Return is not a film that views myth as a fairy tale, but recovers it to confront it with the pain and the unbearable weight of existence beyond time. Its power lies in breaking down the distance between the hero and the man, between legend and reality, making the Homeric myth a reflection on our very condition as human beings, always in battle with the memory of the past, the burden of war, and the search for a sense of belonging that, by definition, always eludes its own realization.

Returning home is like rediscovering that the past is no longer where we left it.

(John Steinbeck)

21-Jan-2025 by Beatrice