War movies are a dime a dozen, but ones that truly take care to tackle the horrors of it are rarer. There are a few masterpieces like Saving Private Ryan and All Quiet on the Western Front, but many films choose to forgo the messaging to focus on action and gore — which makes the historical epic The Return’s nuanced focus on PTSD all the more impressive. Based on Homer’s the Odyssey, director Uberto Pasolini chooses to focus on Odysseus’ (Ralph Fiennes) later years as he makes his way home while also examining how his decisions have affected his wife, Penelope (Juliette Binoche), and son, Telemachus (Charlie Plummer).
An esteemed Italian writer, director, and producer, Pasolini was nominated for an Oscar for producing The Full Monty, for which he also won a BAFTA. His other directing credits include Still Life and Machan, which both won several awards at the prestigious Venice Film Festival, among others. Plummer also won an award at the Venice Film Festival for 2017’s Lean on Pete and is best known for his turns in the adaptation of John Green’s Looking for Alaska and The Clovehitch Killer. Plummer was most recently seen in the gorgeous National Anthem, where he played a construction worker who found purpose and identity with a group of queer rodeo performers.
Collider got a chance to speak with Pasolini and Plummer about The Return. Pasolini breaks down the film’s stunning visuals and reveals why he read interviews with Vietnam veterans to prepare to shoot the film, while Plummer talks about the film as a coming-of-age story and reading the script for the first time.
Uberto Pasolini Wanted ‘The Return’ to Feel as Real as Possible
COLLIDER: This film is so stunning in a lot of ways, but I feel like visually, it's so gorgeous. Uberto, can you talk about creating this world and capturing these shots — particularly the nature ones — with your cinematographer?
UBERTO PASOLINI: Hi, Taylor. Good to meet you. Well, we felt that it was very, very important to ground the story in reality. At the script stage, we decided to focus on people rather than monsters, gods, travels. [We wanted to focus on] a man coming home to his family and the difficulty of that and the psychology of that but to set it all in a world that was earthy, that was real — so real water, real woods, real sand, real rain. With the cinematographer, that's what the conversation really was. That was the aim. And when we decided on the design, what we wanted to do, again, was to have a language in the clothing — not costumes but clothing — and architecture that was not distracting. We didn't try to invent what Greece might have been in 1300 before the current era. We just found a language which is universal — and contemporary, too. Everybody is still wearing cloth everywhere — in Europe, in Asia, in Africa — and everybody is still building houses with stones, and there is nothing that is constructed.
I told the designer and the costume designer, “I don't want your work to be noticed. I want our audience to focus on faces, to focus on emotions, to focus on these people — these real people in a real world.” And that's where the nature of Corfu, which is where we shot the film, infused the story so much. I think it fed the performances, and it fed the crew while we were working. We were absorbing our environment and channeling it into the camera.
Charlie Plummer Had a “Huge Feeling of Relief” Reading ‘The Return’s Script
Image via Bleeker Street
No, absolutely. I feel like that really shines through. Obviously, it is this grand epic, but there is also this really intimate coming-of-age story for your character, Charlie. I was curious if you could talk a little bit about that — this movie through this almost coming-of-age lens.
CHARLIE PLUMMER: Mm, yeah. Honestly, you know, all of these characters are coming of age in a way, I suppose — just at different times and different ages. But there is that internal development that's absolutely driving a tremendous amount of the story. I was just so fortunate that this script and this version of the text was so tightly composed in a way that, for me, it just made everything. The logic was always there, and it was always complete, and it never felt like any portion of it was missing or, “Oh, we needed to fill this out” or anything like that. It always just kind of was understood. And I think, when you're working with text like that, there's a huge feeling of relief in that. So as much as, of course, I could kind of draw comparisons or find ideas, it was more just knowing we had everything we needed in that. As we got into it, Uberto would share little things and details would kind of color things differently, but I would say the core of it was just always intact from the very first time I read it. And so I think, when you have something like that, it really is the ship that we're all on and just crossing this — to continue this terrible analogy — ocean of an experience together.
Uberto Pasolini Read Interviews With Vietnam Veterans to Prepare for ‘The Return’
Image via TIFF
I think it's a great analogy! And it's a great script, as you were saying. Odysseus’ story is one that has been dramatized many times, but his later years aren't explored nearly as often. I'm curious for you, Uberto, what drew you to looking at this specific part of his life and essentially tackling PTSD in 1300 B.C.? Because it's not something you see even in modern scripts that often, so to see it in this historical context is so fascinating to me.
PASOLINI: As we were saying before, my interest in making a film — in daring to enter into a dialogue with Homer — was to find something that meant something to me as a man, as an older man, as a father, as a husband, ex-husband. And so the focus was — from the very beginning, script-wise — on the ending of the Odyssey, on the coming together of this family that had been wrenched apart by war, and on what war does to people. Of course, the people who go to fight it but also the people who wait and wait at home and how those people have to deal when the soldiers return.
And I read a lot of interviews with Vietnam veterans and their wives about what it means to come back from war and how difficult it is to reintegrate into society, into a family, and reconnect, and they were absolutely fascinating, and they really, really informed our writing of the script. And this is not just because we are clever and reading contemporary accounts of what it means to go to war, but it's because Homer allows you to do so. In Homer itself, Odysseus is a very messed-up individual. He cries when he thinks about Troy. We have him cry when he thinks about Troy. He does not think of himself as a hero. We might remember him from our school days as a hero who went to Troy and came back, but in reality, Homer depicts a very conflicted, very suffering man — a man of pain, a man hated, a man with guilt of what he has done in war, the guilt of leaving his family unprotected alone, the guilt of not bringing his companions home. So the complexity in Homer is there if you want to read it, and all we did is bring it out and infuse it with, yes, more recent reading.
The confessions of a Vietnam vet, to me, is fundamental. And you mentioned PTSD, and yes, it is. It is a man with PTSD. It is a man who has to be helped, will be helped. And I hope that, at the end of the film, you will feel that that journey — the real journey of return — only starts at the end when he will find a way, we hope he will find a way, to come out of the experience and to put the wall behind him. That's in the next movie we’re going to make. [Laughs]
After 20 years away, a weary warrior returns to his homeland of Ithaca, only to find his kingdom in disarray and his wife besieged by suitors. This retelling of the classic myth explores the hero's journey to reclaim his home, confront the changes in his absence, and restore order amidst the upheaval. Themes of loyalty, perseverance, and the impact of time shape this powerful reimagining of Homer’s "Odyssey."
Image via Bleeker Street 
Image via TIFF 
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