The Return

So i would like to start off why saying that this is probably my second favorite movie that we've watched so far in this class. I have no idea why it just grabbed me because i was always wondering what was going to happen next. As for the filming i can tell the director was inspired by Tarkovsky simply by his love for natural scenery. It seemed he was always freezing the camera on water dripping, or trees that were just beautiful pieces of nature. Furthermore, i remember a similar scene from a Tarkovsky film with the crosses present in this film as well.


As for the movie itself, I felt as though at the dinner table it was an awkward way for a father to come home. A homecoming should be a celebration but the father was just like "hey" and moved on like he never left which didn't really leave any closure for Ivan. Furthermore, i felt as though the father was trying to do 12 years of fathering in a matter of a week which is just too much for someone Ivan's age to accept. Theres a difference between tough love and near torcher and i felt like he was going beyond tough love. Its hard for children to accept a man telling them what to do when they haven't had it in 12 years. Furthermore, i was upset that we never found out why the father disappeared, or what he was doing on this trip with the phone calls and the hidden box. I wish that would have been explained because that was the only thing that disappointed me about the film.