The Return (Vozvrashchenie)

Dir: Andrey Zvyagintsev

2003

*****

2003’s The Return is one of the greatest debuts by a first time director of all time. I said it at the time, and I still say it now, Andrey Zvyagintsev could be the next Andrei Tarkovsky or Sergei Eisenstein. I found the film to be so profound that I treated myself to a repeat viewing as soon as I’d watched it. It’s the film I bored my friends with in 2003, telling them that they had to watch it and that I wouldn’t talk to them until they had. I’m still waiting on a few of them. The opening shots of the bleak and barren landscapes of Kozintsev made my heart swell. In present day Russia, we find Ivan and his older brother Andrei, who have grown a deep attachment to each other due to their shared fatherless childhood. Living with their mother and grandmother, their lives are slow and mundane. After running home after a fight with each other one day, the brothers are shocked to discover that their father has returned after a twelve-year absence. With their mother's uneasy blessing, Ivan and Andrei set out on what they believe will be a simple fishing vacation with him. Andrei is delighted to be reunited with their father while Ivan is apprehensive towards the man whom they know only from a faded photograph. At first, both brothers are pleased with the prospect of an exciting adventure, but they soon strain under the weight of their father's awkward and increasingly brutal efforts to make up for the missing decade. Ivan and Andrei find themselves alternately tested, rescued, scolded, mentored, scrutinized and ignored by the stranger they call father. Andrei seems to look up to his father while Ivan remains stubbornly defensive. As the truck stops and cafés give way to rain-swept, primeval wilderness coastline, Ivan's doubts give way to open defiance. Andrei's powerful need to bond with a father he's never known begins, in turn, to distance him from Ivan. Ivan and his father's test of will escalates into bitter hostility and sudden violence after the trio arrives at their mysterious island destination. Ivan has an outburst of anger after witnessing his father strike Andrei. He shouts at his father, runs into the forest, and climbs to the top of the observatory tower. Andrei and their father run after him. The father tries to reason with Ivan, but this only stresses Ivan further. He then threatens to jump down from the top of the tower. The father tries to reach out to him, but falls to his death. Ivan and Andrei take the body across the forest, bring him on board the boat, and sail back to where they came. While the boys are putting their gear in the car, the boat starts to drift away. Andrei screams, "Father!" and starts running towards the shore, followed by Ivan, but it is too late. The boat and the body are sinking. Ivan screams "Father!" for the first and the last time from the bottom of his heart. They get into the car and drive away. The film ends with still images from their journey. I read an interview where Zvyagintsev explained that the four main characters of the film represent the four elements: "Earth is Mother, water is Father... the elder brother, Andrey, is air and Ivan is fire.” Before playfully adding “But if you think it's all different, it is." There is something strangely mythical about the film, it’s very dreamlike and you wonder whether the events are happening at all. It’s clearly a film about fatherhood, childhood and manhood, and the relationships us menfolk have with each other, that is, the often unspoken relationship we have as brothers, sons and fathers. It’s a metaphorical metamorphosis showing the change from childhood to manhood but through the eyes of two very different individuals. It shows the difference there can be between two people who share everything. I don’t think it is a political film, although the idea that the father figure represents the strong Communist USSR and his death represents the death of that state, while the two sons can be interpreted as one representing the section that accepted subjugation by the state and the other that rebelled against the state and demanded freedom and democracy, do make me wonder. The scene where Andrei screams, "Father!" could be seen as citizens yearn for the "fatherland" of the past. Their red car also seems to be the most colourful object in the entire film but as Zvyagintsev said, “But if you think it's all different, it is." As a man, son, father and former boy, I know what it means to me and I think that is the point of the film. It means something to Zvyagintsev but that is not to say it isn’t open to interpretation – most of the greatest films are. For me the depth matched the stark beauty of the film and left a lasting impression. When pre-production was starting, Zvyagintsev told producer Dmitry Lesnevsky there was no point in making the film if they couldn't find two boys who were "actors of genius." Zvyagintsev had two assistants who helped him look for actors, one in St. Petersburg and one in Moscow, and visited both cities himself. He found Vladimir Garin (Andrei) in St. Petersburg and Ivan Dobronravov (Ivan) in Moscow, picking them from over six-hundred contenders. Tragically, Vladimir Garin drowned in a lake near to where the film was shot shortly after filming and two months before the film's debut, making the film even more poignant than it was before.