Preview
THE RETURN
Starring Vladimir Garin and Ivan Dobronravov
Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev
Wednesday, September 29
Globe Cinema
Emotionally austere, consciously mythic and ruggedly beautiful, The Return is a Russian arthouse film of the old school. Viewers from Minsk to Minneapolis will sense the ghost of Tarkovsky hovering over its epic-length shots, brooding characters and heavy emphasis on the wonders and terrors of the natural world. The jury at the Venice film festival last year interpreted The Return’s arrival as something momentous, duly awarding it the fest’s top prize, the Golden Lion.
Like two other Russian films of recent note – Koktebel and Alexander Sokurov’s rapturous Father and Son – The Return is an intense drama about paternal bonds. Two adolescent brothers – Andrey (Vladimir Garin) and Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) – living with their mother in a town north of St. Petersburg come home one day to discover that their father has returned after a 12-year absence. His whereabouts are never explained, though there are suggestions of criminal habits. Often brutal, yet capable of tenderness, the unnamed father (Konstantin Labronenko) takes the boys on a trip to a remote island that is often shrouded in an ominous fog. The reunion is imperilled by the physical arduousness of the journey, the boys’ suspicions about the father’s true motives and the volatile dynamics among the three.
Although The Return sometimes emulates its ’60s and ’70s art-film antecedents too slavishly, it is a captivating debut. Director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s achievement is all the more impressive considering that he had no formal training as a filmmaker. During an interview in Toronto last September, he explained how he learned his craft. "I would say that the school I went to was the Museum of Cinema in Moscow," he said through a translator. "I used to go there and watch two or three films a day. I watched masterpieces by Antonioni, Bergman, Bertolucci, Godard, Bresson, Tarkovsky. I learned the general context of cinema this way. Literature should be written for people of the same language because they will receive it the best – they know all the nuances. But cinema is an international language because it’s based on images that everyone can understand."
His gallery of visual quotations extends to great paintings as well as great cinema – the first time the boys see their father sleeping, the image of the man in bed is intentionally reminiscent of The Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, painted circa 1490 by Italian artist Ludivico Mantegna. "When I was reading the script, I made an association with this picture," says Zvyagintsev. "I did everything on the basis of that picture, even the lighting. When the film showed in Italy, I heard everyone in the audience saying, ‘Mantegna, Mantegna.’ For them it’s something very clear, this is something they know by heart."
Adding poignance to The Return’s win at Venice was the news that Garin died shortly after the film was shot, drowning in the same lake where his character Andrey is seen swimming. Even if The Return had not been blighted by this tragedy, Garin and Dobronravov’s performances would still be remarkable. Zvyagintsev spent five months in Moscow and St. Petersburg trying to cast their roles. "It’s not very correct to base all your searches and casting only on the script because you may never find the exact people," he says. "You have to look for someone who is more flexible, who can be an actor, who has something that radiated from inside. So when I found Vladimir and Ivan, they had very deep personalities. Although they were very young, their personalities were fully in place. For example, Vladimir had the same nature as his character. He was very kind, open and frank, as he is in the film – he didn’t have to act much. Vanya (Ivan), on the other hand, had to show somebody else, someone who is naughty and aggressive. He had to change himself because in reality he was as nice as Vladimir."
And thanks to the care that Lavronenko takes in the role, the father never becomes a mere bully to the boys. Zvyagintsev struggled to give the character the shading and gravitas appropriate to a movie as rich as The Return. "I don’t want to humiliate the original scriptwriter when I say we had to throw out the beginning and ending," says the director. "The film in the script was in a certain genre. It was a real action movie and the father was a hero like Batman or Spider-Man, but a very brutal person – he was more like the Terminator. I made him more human. Also I changed the movement of time and nature of the events – it went from an action movie to an art-house movie." |
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