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| He's Back: A wayward father comes home in Andrey Zvyagintsev's striking debut, The Return. |
In The Return, a first feature by Andrey Zvyagintsev, a father who abandoned his wife and two young boys a dozen years ago mysteriously reappears and takes his sons on a fishing trip that quickly turns into a test of wills. Vanya (Ivan Dobronravov), now 12, is deeply mistrustful of his emotionally distant father (Konstantin Lavronenko), while his older brother, Andrey (Vladimir Garin), tries to win the father’s favor, causing a rift between the siblings. Their seven-day outing has a doom-laden tone in the metaphysical-mythic manner of Zvyagintsev’s main influence, Andrei Tarkovsky. The beauty of the wilderness is shot through with the threat of sudden violence.
Despite its portentousness, The Return has genuine power. It’s possible to read into it all kinds of allegorical meanings—the prodigal father, for example, could be the reemergence of what, in all its strangeness, had once been suppressed under communism—but it also does very well as a study of riven male lineage. The hurt and rage flying back and forth have primal power, like Russian-flavored Eugene O’Neill. It’s rare for a movie to work as effectively as this one does on such parallel tracks. And somehow, the tracks meet in the end: Isolated by their pain, these people are inseparable from the landscape, which seems to be crying out for something beyond understanding. They share a vast sorrow. (1 hr. 46 mins.; R)
— PETER RAINER
Opens February 6
• Showtimes
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