"The Return" aka "Vozvrashcheniye" (2003) tries to succeed on many levels as visual allegory, suspense, road movie, and on the deeper, more dramatic level of the father sons' connections. Two brothers, 15 year old Andrei and 12 year old Ivan who are very close, live with their mother and grandmother thinking that their father was dead. One day, the father returns after 12 year absence and on the next day, he takes the boys on the week long fishing trip. For all three of them, the trip changed their lives forever.
The Return is an impressive debut by Andrei Zvaygintsev. His camera man Mikhail Krichman and two young actors deserve the praise and the awards. But when I read that Zvyagintsev is Tarkovsky reincarnated and the film is as deep and meaningful as the best Bergman's works, I don't buy it. Why did the father insist on taking the sons with him while his reason to go to the mysterious island was far from fishing? Am I to believe that the best the father could do after 12 years absence was to humiliate and to treat his sons as a drill sergeant? The most important and emotional, central to the film scene on the island with the screams, tears, and hatred felt like so called "Dostoyevshina" a la Dostoyevsky but without his pain, anger, and talent. Dostoyevsky would've gone deep inside his character's soul and heart to give us the reasons for his actions in "The Return" I had to take the director's and writer's words for granted and it is hard for me to do. What did I learn? That the fathers see themselves in their sons, hate themselves and try to break their children so the children will not repeat their (fathers') mistakes? That "The father always knows better?" That the generation of the children and the parents will never (or too late) understand one another? Or another idea. Maybe the father represents the old, before "Perestroika" Russia. Why not? He was absent for 12 years he disappeared somewhere in the beginning of 1990s just when Soviet Union ceased to exist and his sons grew in a new country, and there is no place in their world for the dark past which their father embodiments. Anything is possible. One thing is for sure it's been done before - poetic symbolism, magnificent indifference of nature, painful and honest dissections of the close relationships, and the return of the prodigal Odysseus.
6.5/10
The Return is an impressive debut by Andrei Zvaygintsev. His camera man Mikhail Krichman and two young actors deserve the praise and the awards. But when I read that Zvyagintsev is Tarkovsky reincarnated and the film is as deep and meaningful as the best Bergman's works, I don't buy it. Why did the father insist on taking the sons with him while his reason to go to the mysterious island was far from fishing? Am I to believe that the best the father could do after 12 years absence was to humiliate and to treat his sons as a drill sergeant? The most important and emotional, central to the film scene on the island with the screams, tears, and hatred felt like so called "Dostoyevshina" a la Dostoyevsky but without his pain, anger, and talent. Dostoyevsky would've gone deep inside his character's soul and heart to give us the reasons for his actions in "The Return" I had to take the director's and writer's words for granted and it is hard for me to do. What did I learn? That the fathers see themselves in their sons, hate themselves and try to break their children so the children will not repeat their (fathers') mistakes? That "The father always knows better?" That the generation of the children and the parents will never (or too late) understand one another? Or another idea. Maybe the father represents the old, before "Perestroika" Russia. Why not? He was absent for 12 years he disappeared somewhere in the beginning of 1990s just when Soviet Union ceased to exist and his sons grew in a new country, and there is no place in their world for the dark past which their father embodiments. Anything is possible. One thing is for sure it's been done before - poetic symbolism, magnificent indifference of nature, painful and honest dissections of the close relationships, and the return of the prodigal Odysseus.
6.5/10