The Return (2003)

Review by Zachary K. Parker

How do you respond to your father?

Russian director Andrei Zvyagintzev focuses on this question in his debut feature, The Return. Teeming with biblical imagery/symbolism and beautifully filmed sequences, Zvyagintsev has created a breathtaking story worth re-visiting many times over.

The Return tells the sobering story of two young boys, Andrey (Vladimir Garin) and Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov), who come home to find their father sleeping. So what? Well, their father has been absent from their lives for the past 12 years. He takes them on a fishing break, which becomes less a fishing break and more of a mysterious trip.

Zvyagintzev offers a universally appealing coming-of-age story, but strongly emphasizes a relationship to parents (and God) as crucial to the transformation. Konstantin Lavronenko plays the boys’ father, who is named only “Father” throughout the film, suggesting a greater meaning than merely biological fatherhood.

All of the performances are stunning, particularly Ivan Dobronravov who captures the rebellious spirit of his character flawlessly.

Andrei Dergachyov’s strikingly subtle score intensifies the tension between the characters, and underscores the remarkable nature of the movie’s distinctiveness. Mikhail Krichman’s cinematography adds beauty and wonderment to the film’s events and scenery with the simple gray and blue tones.

In what actually carries more meaning than it disregards it, Zvyagintsev does not explain every plot idiosyncrasy, but he limits the audience’s perspective to that of the two boys.

Because Father acts so cryptically, Ivan never stops speculating about his father’s past or his intentions towards them as he brings them alone to an island. On the other hand, the older brother, Andrey is more willing to accept his mother’s word about dad, and rebukes Ivan for his conjectures.

 Andrey seems to represent the flawed first son of Matt. 21:28-32, and Ivan the second son in the passage. Zvyagintsev clearly sets up Father as a Christ figure, and a type of Patriarch who deserves the love and obedience of his sons. Like God, he does not reveal his every purpose to us, but demands our love and obedience nonetheless.

Expanded with spoilers from this point on:

When the boys first see their father, he is asleep on a bed, positioned similarly to Andrea Mantegna’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ. Afterwards Ivan immediately rushes upstairs to find an old picture of the family when the boys were just toddlers.

 He finds the picture enclosed in (presumably) a bible, stuck between pages with pictures of an angel stopping Abraham from sacrificing Isaac. 

When the family gathers to commune at the table, the father passes out the wine and food to even the children. Ivan tells his father he does not like it, but Andrey does and is thirsty for more. Later in the café, the Father commands Ivan to eat his bread instead of playing with it.

Ivan’s rebellion grows more and more as the film progresses, and he convinces his older brother to disobey his father’s orders on several accounts. After the father digs up some box he has to return to the mainland in the evening, he lets his sons go fishing for a few hours before they must leave the island.

Ivan convinces Andrey to disobey, and Andrey relinquishes the responsibility of being older to follow his brother into sin. When they return to the island, their father punishes them. Ivan’s bitterness leads him to pull out the knife he had been plotting to use to kill his father, and he drops it and runs away.

Climbing a tower (resembling the one the boys jumped off in the beginning), Ivan threatens to jump off. His Father cannot reach him but calls out to him to stop, in one of the most moving scenes in the movie, the Father calls out to “Vanya, my son” and falls off the tower.

Using the skills their father taught them earlier, Andrey finally takes responsibility as the leader and takes his father and younger brother back to the mainland. When the boat sinks with only their dead father in it, Ivan yells “Papa,” something he has refused to do previously.  

As mentioned earlier, The Return is a story about childhood transforming into adulthood. The island becomes a point of no return where the boys arrive as kids, and leave men. In the beginning scene, the boys jump into the water, but Ivan does not, and thus gains the criticism of his peers (and older brother) who call him a “coward.”

Fundamentally, Ivan is afraid of jumping (adulthood), and so he climbs down in the arms of his mother (childhood). In the end, his hatred spews out as he stands ready to jump and reach an end that children and adults must both meet—death.

However, his Father takes the deadly “jump” for “Vanya, my son,” which brings the first expression of Ivan’s growing into adulthood. It is interesting to note that the Father dies on Friday, just like the Church’s traditional day for the death of Christ. In the same way, our heavenly Father sent His only Son to take responsibility (adulthood) for our childish sins and saved us from death.