THE RETURN
cert. 12a
The Return is an extraordinarily assured work, steeped in mystery and sustained tension, that doubles as a profound study of the relationship between a father and his sons, and as a portrait of a nation caught in an agonised bear-hug with its history.

Konstantin Lavronenko plays a father who is returning home to his wife and two sons after an absence of 12 years. He tucks into his supper, showing neither happiness nor contrition. The boys barely remember him. The eldest, Andrei (Vladimir Garin), is excited, but Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) is bitter. His face is ugly with resentment at this stranger whom he refuses to call "papa".

The father decides to take them on a gruelling trek, by car and on foot, through the wilderness of northern Russia. Whether it's to get re-acquainted or for him to reimpose the hand of authority is unclear.

He is taciturn and harsh. When Ivan refuses to get into their car one afternoon, he is abandoned for hours in the driving rain. The landscapes, all grey horizonless seas, ghost towns and cold forests, are unforgiving.

advertisement
The boys are forced to tramp through miserable terrain and to row boats across choppy waters. Their father's inscrutability means they're not entirely sure whether they're being tested or punished. Does he want to make them into a man like himself? Who is it that he keeps phoning?

Another question the boys - and we, the audience - would like to have answered is whether there's an end point to their journeying. The film is divided into seven sections - starting with Sunday, and proceeding day-by-day: it gestures towards, but refrains from confirming, a biblical significance to the odyssey it depicts.

The Return has a lot in common with Aleksandr Sokurov's forthcoming Father and Son, which also grapples with familial intimacy and antagonism. In itself it enacts a filial relationship with the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, not least his Ivan's Childhood. Neither director is scared of silence.

Both are captivated - and captivate their viewers - by the ceaseless sorrow and cold beauty of Russian landscapes. Scrupulously composed and framed, and underscored by Andrei Khudyakov's prickly sound design, The Return is a work of doleful, haunting splendour that lingers in the imagination for a long time.