The ReturnIs a Shabby CliffsNotes Version of the Odyssey
Homer’s Odysseus is complicated and playful — a man who has suffered, and is changed. Pasolini’s Odysseus squints, and occasionally flexes.
by Joel Christensen 
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I can imagine seeing thisOdysseus as an allegory for the “Western man.” Here, one could weave a critique of our complicity in violence as we watch wars and horrors abroad, posing the fundamental question at the heart of our claim to righteous civilization: What does it mean to be a father and son, to care for families and cities, even as we obliterate those abroad? The serious performances of Fiennes and Binoche point to such a possible depth, but the tone is too often wrong. Eurykleia’s line before Odysseus begins to mow down the suitors speaks more of Jason Vorhees than an epic hero: “My boy is back. Now you can kill them all.”
Perhaps collapsing horror and epic was the plan all along — Odysseus is certainly one of literature’s greatest serial killers. In this reading, Penelope’s eventual acceptance of her husband speaks a truth that we should all know: Nobody is a monster to everyone. The final scene of violence is aptly slow and brutal. It isn’t a bloodbath like one might expect, but a deliberate thunk-thunkof arrows ending the suitors’ lives.
Each retelling of the Odysseysays as much about its time and audiences as it does about the tradition of myth around its hero of many turns. This, I think, is something we can take away from The Return: It is a fantasy of violent revenge that transpires despite acknowledging that trauma shapes both victim and perpetrator in turn. This Odysseus has neither future nor past, just the cooling comfort of bloodshed that will only create more in turn.
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