The Return (2003)

Thanks for the memories!

hyped garbage

Fresh and Exciting

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The main character gives you a wrong impression from the get-go. You start believing he is a missing part for his family happiness. Old style, mostly brutal, treatment towards his sons somehow make you think it will help them in a long run. But it won't. As we find out later, the father is simply trying to mask his weaknesses with his false toughness. The irony is that his death serves as a turning point for his boys, not his life. They need him to be dead to learn a lesson.

There is an unwritten rule for good cinema - it's show, don't tell. Cinema is a visual medium and we want to see the story as observers, as if we're actually there. Now these kids have not seen their dead of god-knows how long, to the point where they weren't sure if it was really him at first. Who is this person? Why did he disappear? Why is he back?In an amateur film, we'd have a narrator or a block of text telling us at the start. In weaker films, the mother would have one conversation telling them everything, briefing them, basically. In another kind of weaker film, the dad would do it. "Here you go kids, this is what you want to know."In a good film, we'd have this information revealed to us slowly. For example, they're at a gas station and the dad uses someone else's card/wallet to pay. Let's say that they see him acting suspiciously from the police. Or he sees someone he recognizes, someone who calls him by a different name. Let's say they see his wallet and he has a photo of his other family. He takes off his shirt and there are some Vor tattoos (prisoner and criminal subculture). Or army tattoos. You give us bits of information, here and there.Of course, none of this was done. The father takes them to a lake and that's it.I had hoped that he would tell them things, here and there, conversations, not a whole "this is everything you need to know" conversation, but they talk and he says something here and there. And with these bits we piece together the picture.But this was not done either.You know the feeling when you come into the room and there's a film playing, the middle of the film, where you don't know what's happening. Imagine a slow scene, where not much is being said, and you just don't know what to make of it because you missed the first hour of the film? This is basically that. It's a slow scene from a film made into a complete movie. The information is never revealed.I'm fine with a film leaving some to the imagination. It makes the experience fun as we come up with different theories and talk about it. But this film basically leaves the whole film to your imagination. What's the point? Why even put the disk into the player? Why not turn off the film and just imagine a film from start to end. I'm not complaining "not enough backstory" but there's no story either. There's no context to the events, barely any events and that's about it.And for those who say "cinematography is beautiful" - no, not really. They chose beautiful things to shoot to begin with. Photos of beautiful landscapes and vistas are not necessarily "good photos" - just as photos of pretty girls are not necessary "great photography." This film shot beautiful visuals, but it's just a pretty screensaver. There's nothing special. It's all too obvious. They chose a desolate, distant place to go, the film is shot in dark, dull and grey colors with low contrast (intentionally underexposed?) and the subject matter is dull and gloomy. It's trying to hammer the theme rather than be subtle about it.It is really forced and pointless.This film is the polar opposite of Michael Bay-style Hollywood films, it goes so far the other direction that it becomes terrible. The solution to obesity is not anorexia or starvation, but this is what many directors do nowadays. 2 stars for production quality and the acting of the children.

This film tells the story of an absentee father who returns home to his two sons, Andrei and Ivan. The three of them go on a road trip and along the way their father attempts to make up for the last twelve years, but is unsuccessful. As their trip continues Andrei and Ivan also grow further apart as Andrei idolizes their father while Ivan distrusts him. When they reach their final destination tensions rise and, inadvertently, Ivan causes his father to fall to his death. Andrei and Ivan are then left to deal with their father's body. This film is an interesting take on a coming of age story as it deals with some of the same themes featured in this genre, like relationships with parents and rebellion, however the film addresses these themes in a much darker way. The struggle that Ivan has with accepting his father as an authority figure in his life and the subsequent change in his relationship with Andrei is the main conflict in the film. From this conflict we see how Ivan changes because of it and comes back to the same situation that we found him in at the beginning of the film. The brothers' relationship with their father also has a significant impact on them. Andrei wants a relationship with their father and obeys his orders while Ivan rejects their father in every way that he can. Only at the end of the film is Ivan able to accept the presence of his father when he shouts and runs into the water as his father's body sinks with the boat that it is on.

The Return is a film that is full drama and dynamic emotion. It has many themes as well as artistic filming technique to exemplify the deeper meaning of the film. It starts out with two brothers, Andrei and his younger brother Ivan. Andrei seems to be wanting to fit in, and is easily embarrassed by his younger brother Ivan. However, they become closer again after returning home one day to find that their father had returned home after being mysteriously gone for 12 years. The father is brooding and harsh with the boys showing himself as powerful. Ivan has more trouble dealing with this new discipline than Andrei does creating conflict between the father and son. There is a lot of slow, long takes in the film to display the emotion and enhances the drama of the events. This all leads up to the climatic event of Ivan running away from the father to climb a tower. The father runs after him to save him from doing something drastic. Displaying that even though the father is harsh and isn't particularly fatherly, he still has a fatherly instinct to save his son. The movie has a lot of themes that play out through the film including love, tragedy, drama, and survival. The showing of the love of brothers, and how deep love runs even if it isn't apparent at the surface. The tragedy of not having a father for the first part of your life, and the tragedy of death. The dramatic events throughout the film. And the display of strength to survive even after tragedy. It is an excellent film