The Return Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.5

The Return Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson June 28, 2018

Back in 2003, the Novosibirsk-born Andrey Zvyagintsev was still an aspiring filmmaker known mainly in the Motherland as a thespian at the Moscow Art Theatre. That would change with his feature directorial debut, The Return (Vozvrashchenie). I remember reading about it a year later in a program accompanying the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival. I very much wanted to see it but all of its showtimes had passed. Zvyagintsev had won acclaim earlier in the winter when his picture was awarded the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. When I later bought Kino's DVD, the long wait was well worth it.

Zvyagintsev uses an episodic narrative told over seven days to dramatize the titular event of a long-absent father's reunion and fishing trip with his two young sons. As The Return opens, the viewer senses that this character drama may be setting up a rite-of-passage. Several boys are jumping into the sea high atop a lighthouse tower. Eleven-year-old Vanya (Ivan Dobronravov), however, seems scared and may suffer from vertigo. He's derided as a coward by the older boys. We feel for him as he shivers on the top of the platform waiting for his mother (Nataliya Vdovina) to help get him down and take him home. Vanya (who also goes by Ivan in the film) lives with his mom, grandmother, and 15-year-old brother Andrei (Vladimir Garin). Outside of fistfights with their peers, the siblings live a quiet life. They are stunned to learn that their biological father (Konstantin Lavronenko) has come home after being away from the family for twelve years. The only answer they receive for his extended absence is that he worked as a pilot but don't know where he flew or spent his time. Father tears away at a chicken and makes his cold and stern presence felt. Father decides to take his sons on a road trip to an unspecified lake in the north of Russia. While Andrei doesn't put up a fuss, Vanya tries to distance himself from his dad in the car. At a restaurant stop, Vanya acts defiant by refusing to eat a meal even though he's starving.

Father came home to sleep?

The Return is written with a minimum of dialogue by Vladimir Moiseenko and Aleksandr Novototskiy. Zvyagintsev and his cinematographer Mikhail Krichman emphasize the stark landscapes and the proximity in which Andrei and Vanya are photographed in relation to their father. The Return rightly received nearly unanimous praise across the board. Longtime critic Kenneth Turan exclaimed: "While most films are fortunate if they succeed on any level, The Return works easily on many, making as powerful a mark emotionally as it does visually and even allegorically." The film does leave several unanswered questions and while I appreciate all its ambiguity, the one weakness is the script not giving Andrei and Vanya better lines as they confront their father. These are two smart teenagers and I was little disappointed that they did not probe him more about why he originally left and then decided to come back when he did. I can relate to observations made by Catherine Graham of Santa Cruz Sentinel: "The languid cinematography is often quite beautiful, but in service of what? The overall sense is that this movie is part of another movie, a puzzle with lots of pieces missing." Still, any faults in the script shouldn't steer you away from seeing this excellent travelogue film (dreary as it may be).

The Return Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Return makes its North American premiere on HD courtesy of Kino Lorber on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50. The 2003 production appears in its originally exhibited ratio of 1.85:1. This appears to be the same transfer that my colleague Dr. Svet Atanasov reviewed on the Artificial Eye edition of the film earlier this year. I would say that 97-98 percent of the print is devoid of any print defects. There were a couple of tiny white specks I noticed but it looks very clean. Artificial Eye's transfer is encoded at an average bitrate of 28.59 Mbps while the Kino is moderately higher at 34923 kbps. According to journalist Scarlet Cheng, Zvyagintsev and Kritchman discussed bleaching the Kodak film to subtract color from the print. The filmmakers were fortunate that of fifty days filming, forty were overcast so the natural soft light added to the "cold" appearance they sought. As you'll notice from the screenshots, The Return features various hues of gray, green, and blue. I'm also included some captures from the Kino DVD from some of the same shots/scenes from the Blu-ray, though not all are exact frame matches. In #12, the bright light obscures the cement wall while Kino eliminated it on the BD. In #17, the dirt and soil beneath the ornamental grasses is more visible than it's SD counterpart. Please note that unlike the DVD, which opens with the Venice Festival award logos (in #20), the Blu-ray only has the KL banner.

Screenshot #s 12, 14, 16, 18, and 20: Kino on Video 2004 DVD Screenshot #s 1-11, 13, 15, 17, and 19: Kino Lorber 2018 BD

The Return Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Kino Lorber supplies a Russian DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix (3923 kbps, 24-bit) and an alternate DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo (1978 kbps, 24-bit). The R1 DVD only had a Russian Dolby Digital Stereo track. I listened primarily to the 5.1 which brings out the seagulls and boys' splashes on the surrounds in the opening sequence. The pitter-patter sounds of hard raindrops is also accented on the satellite speakers. Andrey Dergachev's score has religious and mystical qualities to it. The instrumentation layered over the scene where the boys run through the streets reminds me of "The Feeling Begins" from Peter Gabriel's Passion album. The sound track for The Return is flawlessly mixed.

I originally bought the Kino DVD over the Fox R2 disc after learning the latter had burned-in subtitles while the American release's were removable. Kino has also done optional English subtitles for the Blu-ray and they are clear, legible, and easy to read.

The Return Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The R1 DVD had three separate stills galleries totaling 50-60 images, including the stunning black-and-white photographs partially shown after the film ends (some 1,200 were considered). Unfortunately, the Blu-ray loses all three and has no gallery at all. Enclosed in this reverse-cover keep case is a slip with a download certificate redemption code for the movie's digital copy.

• NEW Interview with Director Andrey Zvyagintsev (12:42, 1080p) - this is a recently recorded interview with Zvyagintsev that's a Kino exclusive. He doesn't simply repeat the same information that's in the making-of documentary. We learn about his cinematic influences and his remembrance of actor Vladimir Garin. In Russian, with English subtitles.

• The Return: A Film About the Film (63:31, 480i) - this is the same doc that first appeared on the R1/R2 docs. It cobbles together talking head interviews with many of the actors and filmmakers and intercuts those with on-location footage. It originally aired on pre-HD TV and is presented in 1.33:1 with non-anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen for the movie clips. In Russian, with imposed English subtitles.

• Trailers - Trailers for other Russian titles in Kino's catalog.

The Return Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you didn't pick up the UK Blu-ray of the The Return that Svet covered in the spring, then this is the one to get, especially with Kino's inclusion of a bonus interview with Andrey Zvyagintsev. I'm also hoping that the Film Movement and Artificial Eye get around to releasing the equally outstanding Koktebel, another Russian production from 2003. (In the US it's known as Roads to Koktebel.) The Return stands as a fine counterpoint to Alexander Sokurov's Father and Son (2003), which is aesthetically and thematically quite different. Fans of Polanski's Knife in the Water (1962) will also greatly enjoy The Return. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.