Restraint is a beautiful quality to have. It's a misunderstood asset to filmmaking. Take Nicolas Winding Refn's DRIVE, for example. The movie achieves such a brutal emotional effect through an erudite mix of understatement and overstatement. It show restraint at the correct moments.Of course, it's a delicacy bount to be lost on people and breed a series of unsuccessful knockoffs that feature more gangsters, more head stomps, more sociopathic behaviour and a lot less of the constrasts that make characters come alive. Andrey Zvyagnitsev's THE RETURN is a movie that defines itself by its restraint. It's a beautiful, über-minimalistic movie that has absolute faith in its capacity to inspire the viewership.
Ivan (Ivan Dobronrarov) and Andrey (Vladimir Garin) grew up without their father Otets (Konstantin Lavronenko). When he comes back home after being missing for 12 years, no questions is asked, but Otets wants to make up for lost time with his boys and proposes to take them on a fishing trip. The kids leave with their dad, confronted to the weight of every years they grew up without him. Every people in the car will test one another's character throughout the trip and will keep together despite being hurt. What Otets wants out of the trip is unclear. He moves the boys from destination to destination without ever doing anything precise in each spot. Ivan and Andrey are confused and frightened and sometimes awed by their father, who needs to decides who he wants to be for his boys.
I didn't think it was possible to fall in love with a movie's storytelling technique alone. THE RETURN got my mind all fired up despite failing to hook me emotionally. Andrey Zvyagnitsev's patient, parcimonious' use of editing and his graceful framing skills came as a breath of fresh air to me. The use of causality in cinema is often time based and requires a lot of editing, but Zvyagnitsev begs to differ. His long shots are crammed with subtle details that will require you to keep thinking and analyzing what's going on. Sometimes it will deliberately frustrate you. THE RETURN isn't a movie that will provide straightforward entertainment. It's not user-friendly and you definitely cannot ''turn your brain off'' watching it. It's a cypher that successfully puts you in Otets' children's shoes for its duration. What does father wants and how do you please him?
Water is an important symbol in THE RETURN.
THE RETURN is a religious metaphor. Or should I say ''sacred''? Otets doesn't have a lot of humanity to him, but he behaves like an all-powerful authority figure that has lost grip on what he once controlled, the way God or the father figures in the Communist era would've. THE RETURN was released about 10 years after the fall of communism in Russia, which is about the age of Ivan, the youngest, most defiant of Otets' children. This is no coincidence. Ivan struggles to get a grip on such an archaic, austere figure and Otets manages this new, chaotic presence in his life poorly. Together, they slip farther and father away from reality, until they reach a mythical island where they won't have any choice but to confront each other. The little negative critics THE RETURN gathered the lack of narrative conclusion, but I thought it was perfect. There's an old saying that goes like : ''It's not the destination, it's the journey that matters,'' and I believe THE RETURN lived up to it.
THE RETURN is about the growth of conscience and self-awareness against authority figures. It's always a burden to take charge of your destiny, a fracture to leave the figures that shaped you behind. Andrey Zvyaginstev nails his subject with a gracefulness that only his original filmmaking methods could grant him. I can't say I related to THE RETURN as the authority figures in my life are all alive and well, but emotional detachment made me appreciate the technical mastery even better. Don't watch THE RETURN if you're looking to cool off from your day. Some movies are made to push the boundaries of your appreciation of cinema and they require energy and close attention. These are the most rewarding kind of movies.