Douglas Mercer
February 16 2025
War is the father of all, the king of everything.
The Return (2024) outlines the return of Odysseus to Ithaca, the legendary Nostos of Homer when after ten years of war we see the homecoming of the hero. We first see him lying unconscious on the beach, his ship wrecked, he is nearly dead, and the ravening band of locusts and usurpers and vampires haunting his land are hoping to prey on his queen. But like the fates by day she threads the sacred scarlet strings and then by night unthreads them, the picture of patience itself.
The hero is taken in by his former servant who is unaware of his identity; he is bloody from the crash and when he emerges from the hut the bright sunlight hurts his eyes and he sees his home as if in a dream; we have learned that the usurpers are living a riotous life and are devouring young pigs, giving no thought to the future. Odysseus sees the devastation of the land and says the King is greedy but is told that there is no king but that for years from miles around claimants and pretenders have appeared waiting for the beautiful Queen to choose. He asks: has she? No, says the servant as he goes off to work saying that in this world we all have our place to uphold.
The hero overhears some men tell the legends of Troy and he notes that people love stories. He says he was there and when they ask about the horse he says we burnt all the forests to keep the winter away; and how dressed as a beggar he went within Troy’s walls and saw Helen herself who gave him some alms; and how as he roamed the streets like the god’s spy he wondered how he would get his men in and the stratagem he devised; and how when the Greeks poured out of the hold they began to burn and to kill and to slaughter; when asked if they had conquered Troy he says no, the city could never be conquered but only destroyed. He tells the men that he did see Odysseus in battle and is reminded that he was the smartest of all the heroes.
The devastation of the land and the kingdom is symbolized when the Old King, the hero’s father, dies, and the servant says they will bury him at dawn; but such is the descent into chaos that when he himself dies they will not even bury him—but leave him to the dogs. For in Ithaca the wasteland is growing apace.
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The Return (2024) is an excellent movie with masterful performances by Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche as the King and The Queen. It is marred by its tribute to the politically correct spirit of the times by including several negros in the cast (negros in ancient Greece?—don’t ask). But this is a minor blemish and this movie is a full throated paean to the Warrior culture of the Aryans. The movie does vacillate over the value of war and power in the person of the Queen with her innate pacifism and in the King’s hand wringing over the death and destruction he has caused; but in the end the hero does return and when he does it is clean up time. The bastards and the degenerate get sent off from the palace in a hail of blood and the blood spattered king and his son ignore the womanly advice of the Queen and simply kill them all, letting the floor run red in a scene worthy of the ending of Hamlet; but in this case no one needs to bid the soldiers shoot for Fortinbras is in the building. He’s the one with the psychopathic look on his face covered from head to toe in blood. The last to be dispatched is the vilest of the interlopers and before Telemachus cuts his head off with one quick strike he wanly looks to to the queen and motions to the dozens of bodies lying in a sea of red and ask forlornly: is this the love you want? Yes, indeed: it is.
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When the Old King dies Penelope’s ruse seems to be up; but she uses her crafty wiles and announces to the suitors that the death shroud will now become a wedding cloak, as it always will; there will be no more waiting, or so she says. The rightful King then tell his servant to take him to the palace but is told they won’t let you in as even tramps are showing up now in the hopes of feeding off the wealth of the land. Take me Odysseus says: take me; at the outskirts of the palace he sees his old hunting dog Argos who is listless and lethargic and when the dog recognizes its master he dies. Inside the hall the king disguised as a beggar is ridiculed for claiming he was at Troy and has cups and food hurled at him in uproarious mockery. He is asked to fight to prove he is a veteran and in the staged fight he kills a giant of a man and the servant rightly says: he won’t need killing any more.
The King is told to forget the war, it’s best to leave it dead and buried, it was a long way off. But he responds by saying no, the war is our world, the war is everywhere, the war is everything we see, and the war is everything we touch, the war is everything we taste and feel, a cup, a table, the war is everything—and the war is waiting for me to make it happen again. When the nurse washes the blood off of the King she recognizes the scar on his thigh and she is exultant that her boy is back. The nurse functions as the conscience of the drama and tells the king: now you can kill them all.
Odysseus specifically refers to the devastation of the Kingdom as a wasteland, echoing Nietzsche (the wasteland grows). He says that all commerce has been cut off, all filial piety gone, all loyalty abrogated, all memory silenced, gangs of thugs harrying the people, the barns are empty, houses broken into at night, one man lives in mortal fear of the next, tradition has been overthrown, the legends gone, and the Old King left to die alone, forgotten.
The vilest of the usurpers surprises the Queen in her lair, catches her unweaving the tapestry. Then he unmasks the crucible of this tale and the weaving and the unweaving, the stitching and the unstitching, he says that we are all weaving stories…….
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The Return (2024) is that rarest of things, a defense of the Aryan noble and beautiful ideal, a defense of the warrior ethos, a defense of the stalwart and standing forth for the true and the right. And it rightly conveys the fact that what is true and what is beautiful and what is noble, what is best, can only be achieved through violence and blood.
The Queen determines to put an end to the entire charade but instead of choosing herself as a woman she rightfully tells the men to choose among themselves, and she proposes that most Aryan of things, from jousting and tilting, to single mortal combat, for she proposes a battle in the form of a feat of strength. But not strength per se mind you, Odysseus is never said to be the strongest of heroes but the smartest, the craftiest, the one with the most wiles. Like Gandalf he knows that a man must not stand up and declare he is King before the time is right but move like a secret agent in the guise of a beggar. For when it comes to the Ring, or the Grail, or the Spear, to be the one who is the possessor of power in a land given over to evil, one must always keep it secret and keep it safe.
She stands in the Mead Hall and announces that the one who wants to be King must first string the bow of Odysseus and then as an archer shoot the arrow through twelve axes which she has lined up without disturbing them—and hit the bulls-eye. This will be a matter of strength at first and then acumen and eyesight and clam nerves, and then the coiled delicacy of the shot. The brute men among the usurpers struggle mightily and vainly to string the bow and fail just as mightily; soon they begin to wail and say it is all another ruse and that to string the bow is: impossible! Even Odysseus could not do it they all chant—it can’t be done.
Then from the silence of the darkness the beggar (the King) speaks up. He cleverly muses that it is after all not every day that one has the chance to test the bow of Odysseus. He asks his wife: can the bow make a man of a beggar? What does the queen think?
Give the man the bow.
But whereas the usurpers had tried to string the bow by overwhelming force the King goes slower and inspects the bow and then kisses it, and like a Wizard conjuring spirits he takes the bow and gently moves it back and forth over the flame of the fire in the middle of the Mead Hall. He is very careful and his eyes focus on the flame as if he is tuning himself just as he is tuning the bow. Then he takes the bow and places it carefully around the midsection of his frame and tautly begins to bend it, testing it; then he takes the bow and moving it behind him he places one end back through his legs and delicately hooks the tapered end on his foot; some odd ritual is happening here which only he knows the meaning of and while the claimants struggled unsuccessfully to place the string on the other tip he does so with ease, with inches to spare, a piece of cake. He then plucks at the string and we hear the on key vibration as if he was tuning it like a tuning fork. Then the nurse hands the quiver full of arrows to Telemachus who in turn gives it to his father.
The camera focuses on Fiennes green eyes as with a dead reckoning, with a dead eye, the archer takes a wide stance and begins to concentrate and then pulls back the string and sends the shaft flying straight though the axes directly to the bullseye. The feat accomplished; the killing of the homecoming can commence at its appointed time.
The King turns to the Queen and asks: is this what you wanted?
The pretenders tell the King to take his luck elsewhere and call him “old solider” The King wraps the quiver on his shoulder and seems to be leaving but instead stops and takes a commanding position at the highest point of the Mead Hall and once more places an arrow in the bow and pierces the man who is telling him to leave. And then with method and precision he picks them all off one by one. When he is out of arrows he descends to the floor and vanquishes them in hand-to-hand mortal combat.
Finally, the chief of the usurpers offers his neck to the Son but the Queen in horror forbids him to kill. Ignoring her pleas for mercy with one clean stroke he removes the head of the final criminal so that the Kingdom, the land, and his inheritance can be rid its pollution.
The Return (2024) is a sanguinary tale of Aryan ideals and Aryan values. It tells the time-honored story of the Return Of The Rightful king and does so in a blood mystery. The scene at the end is a river of blood and the hero is covered in splatters of scarlet red, from top to toe as he presents himself to his queen. This of course is reminiscent of Elsinore, another slaughterhouse in a Mead Hall, but here there is no wretched queen, and no one is saying goodbye. For in this fortunate instance Fortinbras is already on the inside, the soldier has already shot. For this is indeed the love that we wanted, so much blood. The dragon slain; the homecoming accomplished.
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Notes:
Nostos (Ancient Greek: νόστος) is a theme used in Ancient Greek literature, which includes an epic hero returning home, often by sea. In Ancient Greek society, it was deemed a high level of heroism or greatness for those who managed to return. This journey is usually very extensive and includes being shipwrecked in an unknown location and going through certain trials that test the hero. The return is not only about returning home physically, but also focuses on the hero retaining or elevating their identity and status upon arrival. The theme of nostos is present in Homer's The Odyssey, where the main hero Odysseus tries to return home after battling in the Trojan War. Odysseus is challenged by many temptations, such as the Sirens and the Lotus-eaters. If Odysseus had given into these temptations it would have meant certain death and thus failing to return home. Nostos is used today in many forms of literature and movies
Fiennes was born in Ipswich, England, on 22 December 1962. He is the eldest child of Mark Fiennes (1933–2004), a farmer and photographer, and Jennifer Lash (1938–1993), a writer. He is the grandson of Maurice Fiennes, great-grandson of Alberic Arthur Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, and great-great-grandson of Frederick Benjamin Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 16th Baron Saye and Sele. His surname is of Norman origin.
