Film
The Return
- Director
- Andrei Zvagintsev
- Certificate
- 12A
- Running Time
- 105 mins
Where’s he been? Why did he come back? What’s in the sack and the box? Is he really who he says he is? Could he be a psycho? Is this some kind of Biblical allegory? Or is it autobiographical? Andrei Zvagintsev’s striking drama throws up all these questions and more. None of them are answered. And yet this brooding mood piece remains utterly gripping all the way to its last frame.
Andrei (Vladimir Garin) and his little brother Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) have been raised by their mother (Natalya Vdovina) and grandmother. One day they return home to be told to keep quiet because “your father is sleeping”. No explanation is given for the sudden reappearance of the man who’s been absent from their lives for 12 years (Konstantin Lavronenko), and whose name we never learn. But the women hardly appear to be overjoyed. The next day, the boys are told that ‘dad’ will be taking them on a fishing trip. So begins a long drive up to the northern lakes and what appears to be a series of macho tests set by this taciturn, unshaven and occasionally brutal father to make men of his sons in the Outward Bound course from hell. He certainly seems to be lacking in basic parenting skills, dumping the whining Ivan on a bridge in the rain for hours and beating eager-to-please Andrei’s head against the car so violently that he draws blood. But he also doesn’t seem to have much interest in fishing. He stops off for some funny business with some other blokes and a curiously body-shaped sack. Then he makes the boys row to a deserted island boasting a few dilapidated buildings and rusting boats, where he slopes off to dig up a mysterious box.
This is a remarkably assured directorial debut, its portentous tone well served by the washed-out hues of Mikhail Kritchman’s superb, fluid widescreen cinematography. It’s clearly building towards something unpleasant, and Zvagintsev gives us plenty of clues as to what this might entail – a hidden knife, a rickety tower, and so on – but you’d be as hard pushed to guess the outcome as work out what’s really going on here. The Return is also touched by real-life tragedy, as 15-year-old Vladimir Garin subsequently drowned in the lake on which much of the story unfolds.
is needed now More than ever
It’s back on screen to conclude the ‘shed’s January Andrei Zvyagintsev Sunday brunch season, screened as an appetiser for his new one, Loveless, which opens in February.
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