‘The return of Ulysses’: a noble approach to Homer … waiting for ‘the Odyssey’ of Nolan | Cinema: premieres and criticism

Now that the cinematographic universe awaits with anxiety The Odyssey From Christopher Nolan, scheduled for July 2026, we get another version of Homer’s epic text that makes us reflect on the fine line that sometimes separates the chance from industrial espionage. How many double films appeared in just a few months, counting practically the same, so that one would be buried by the other! Armageddon y Deep Impact; Robin Hood, prince of thieves y Robin Hood, the magnificent; Vermin y Hormigaz; The final trick y The illusionist; Truman Capote e History of a crime. The group is now joined by Nolan and this The return of Ulysses, With which Uberto Pasolini, at least, advances over time.

Pasolini, veteran producer (Full Monty) And late director (he debuted at age 50), who has nothing to do with Pier Paolo despite his last name, although surprisingly yes with Luchino Visconti, because he is his nephew, he is again faithful to his constant search for emotion, exercised with conviction in his last two films, the beautiful It is never too late (2013) y Near you (2020). In The return of Ulysses, However, with realistic costume and setting, it only finds it at times.

With excellent criteria, Pasolini and his prestigious coguionistas – the veteran playwright Edward Bond, who died a few months before the premiere, screenwriter of the mythical Blow-Up and of WalkaboutNicolas Roeg’s masterpiece; and John Collee, co -writer of Master And Commander— They have eliminated any trace of the gods and the supernatural of Homer’s story. There are only human beings and earthly conflicts: war, conscience, fidelity, honor and arrival. They have eliminated almost the entire first part of the epic poem, have modernized language (without excesses) and have developed the story from the XVI song (until the XXVI and last), although with a different order in some passages, which does not cloud the whole. Almost correcting Homer in the structure of events, and informing of events not narrated in the film through short and precise dialogues, but always being faithful to his spirit.

Ulises, or Odysseus, what is called here despite the renamed Spanish title of the original The return (the return), It is far from other versions. In fact, until the final climax, he is not a strong and heroic man, but a tired and almost old antihero. And in that sense he connects very well with subsequent soldiers that took an eternity to return from the conflict or made him fighting patients: the ethhan edwards of Desert centaurs; he Captain Conan by Bertrand Tavernier, or the uncertain Gérard Depardieu of The return of Martin Guerre. A line of the story in which two formidable phrases of Odysseus and Penelope, in a summit dialogue, mark the tone with their antibelicism:

“Why do men find war and not the way home?”

“For some the war becomes her house.”

In the cast, with Ángela Molina as Euriclea, the old Nodriza de Odysseus, Juliette Binoche displays personality as a Penelope, and Ralph Fiennes, in a portentous form in these years, looks with an exhausted look that says everything without words.

Surely condemned forever to be the other, To go down in history as the little movie that premiered shortly before the famous one (we will see if the good), The return of Ulysses It is a noble curiosity somewhat plúmbea, outside its time in commercial matters with such style, that in the artistic aspect it provides notable narrative and concept ideas, together with marked errors due especially to its monochor of rhythm and a more academic than classical visualization.