The Return

Two young brothers must come to terms with the unexpected reappearance of their long-absent father in this debut feature from director Andrei Zvyagintsev. Ivan (the wonderfully expressive Ivan Dobronravov) and his older sibling Andrei (Vladimir Garin) are living with their mother and grandmother in a crumbling Russian provincial town when the father (Konstantin Lavronenko) they've never known suddenly returns home. A hard, menacing fellow, he takes the boys on a car trip, ostensibly to get acquainted, but the journey becomes a test of wills between him and the sullen, suspicious Ivan, ending on a deserted island where the father has come to retrieve a buried box. The Return has an elliptical quality--it's never revealed where the father has been (prison?), or what's in the box he's so anxious to recover--but the specifics don't matter nearly as much as the mood of pained longing and submerged rage that the director and cast manage to create, enhanced by cinematography that lends a gray, dismal cast to the landscape, mirroring the domestic turmoil of the principals. And while The Return needs no extraneous information to hit home, the fact that Garin died in a drowning accident shortly after the film was completed increases its poignancy. Highly recommended. [Note: DVD extras include the 63-minute subtitled making-of documentary 'A Film About the Film,' three stills galleries (black & white, color, and behind-the-scenes), and a trailer. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a haunting foreign film.] (F. Swietek) [Blu-ray Review—June 26, 2018—Kino Lorber, 105 min., in Russian w/English subtitles, not rated, Blu-ray: $29.95—Making its Blu-ray debut, 2003’s The Return features a fine transfer and DTS-HD 5.1 and 2.0 audio. Extras include a 2004 'making-of' documentary (64 min.), and an interview with director Andrey Zvyagintsev (13 min.). Bottom line: this powerful Russian film makes a welcome debut on Blu-ray.]