My 1st Foray Into Russian Cinema: The Return

I have said this before that since I started writing this blog, if there is one change that has happened prominently in my movie watching habits, that is the amount of foreign movies I have been watching since then. Not that I never saw any foreign movies before, but with the help of fellow bloggers my knowledge and interest in the foreign cinema has risen exponentially over last year or so. I believe that by now, I have seen glimpse of film industry of almost all the important or influential countries in movie world. However, even then I had one stone unturned - Russian movies. I am not sure how I manage to stay clear of any movie from biggest country in the world however I have been on the look out for something to start with for quite some time. Movies made by legendary Russian director Andrey Tarkovskiy were often thrown into the mix but till now his films have eluded me successfully and call me ignorant but I never knew that classical films like Battleship Potemkin(1925) and Ivan: The Terrible(1944) were Russian. However, when fellow Indian blogger Murtaza Ali@A Potpurri of Vestiges recommended a film called The Return(2003) which happened to be in my Netflix queue, I jumped on it as soon as I could.

The Return(2003), debut film for the director Andrei Zvyaginstev is basically a story of two brothers and a week they spend with their father when he returns home after absence of 12 years. Two brothers Andrey and Ivan (or Vanya, that part confused me a little) are used to their life without their father and have built their own world around each other and their mother and grandmother. With the return of their father, lot of unasked questions that lay dormant for 12 years start to surface and ripple the seemingly calm lives of these brothers. Of the two, older Andrey seems to be more welcoming of his father and starts looking up to him almost immediately, Ivan however is troubled. Their father, who isn't trying to bridge this 12 year gap with dotage and is rather brutal and officious with boys, isn't helping the matter much. Even though he readily agrees to take them on a fishing trip the boys are very much interested in, he is not in winning their hearts over, he is rather being a usual father figure which for boys he is anything but. Question that troubles Ivan is why their father decided to return now when both their lives were returning to normal ? They don't need him now, he certainly doesn't need them and he can not shrug this feeling off as easily as Andrey seems to. He starts to hate his father, question his every intention, defy his every order. This only results in more clashes and increase in drift between father and son.

 

An interesting thing about The Return is director Zvyaginstev doesn't look like trying to solve every riddle he puts forward and even more notably, it feels like it is done purposely. We never know anything about what their father did for 12 years he was missing. Throughout their trip, you can not help but question if their father is really taking them on this trip because boys wanted to or does he have some hidden agenda ? There is also no explanation to where they are going and why ?  On the island, their father is shown to be digging something and then he brings some kind of box back on the boat. That end is kept loose as well, never tied to anything else in the story. Another interesting thing is, during the middle hour, it feels like it is not going anywhere. However, during this time, very poignantly, it gets the stage ready for the last half hour which comes absolutely out of the blue and transforms the story. This movie is full of allegories and it is very well possible that I missed few references to these situations mentioned above but even then without those references, none of these unanswered questions are game breakers especially because of the excellent use of penetrating silence. However, those few missed references pose an interesting question to me - does a movie have to have an different underlying meaning to mean something or whatever the superficial meaning is enough to make it through ? In my case at least, those missed references did not make this any less of a movie.

While watching The Return, it reminded me of couple of films - first, Majid Majidi's Children of Heaven(1997) or any Majidi film for that matter because of the phenomenal use of children as two central characters and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring(2003) for it's serene atmosphere and spotless cinematography. It actually scores a lot on technical aspects. Right from the very first scene of water, it looks crisp and beautiful, camera work is unique and different which keeps on lurking behind almost like an extra character. I even felt that it was very different in its sound department, mixing as well as editing. However, single most strong-point of The Return has to be the two stars and their great acting. It is very interesting to see both the kids assuming very different roles based on the situation. When they are with the their father, Ivan is the aggressor and Andrey immediately takes the supporting role or that of a mitigator. However, in the lieu of the tragedy in the end, Andrey immediately slips in the role of big brother, takes the charge and so does Ivan in the role of follower. Their father, played by Konstantin Lavronenko who later became first Russian to win best actor award at Cannes for Zvyaginstev's second film The Banishment(2007), also does a fine job indeed.

With an excellent start like this, I am sure that I will look forward to dig deeper into Russian movies. Not only Tarkovskiy and Einstein with their exemplary contribution to the world cinema, this movie has got me more interested in Zvyaginstev's career as well. I am sure that I will try and get hold of his other movies like The Banishment(2007) which as mentioned above was even recognized in Cannes and probably also his latest Elena(2011).

Rating(out of 5):