Return stars Linda Cardellini as the protagonist, a reserve soldier who returns home after deployment and cannot reacclimate to life with her family, friends or coworkers. Since she cannot just return to her old routine, the film examines the new life that she creates in the wake of her unspoken experience.
I wish that I could claim that I put Return in my queue because I am a fan of Cardellini, which I am, but I did not even know that she was in it when I put it in my queue. I actually love her from Freaks and Geeks, the dreckitude Scooby-Doo films, Brokeback Mountain, ER, a couple of Marvel movies and please tell me that you had to pay your mortgage, Green Book.
I wish that I could claim that I put Return in my queue to support women directors such as Liza Johnson, but I did not even know that Johnson directed it until after I saw the film and started reading about it. Apparently I must enjoy Johnson’s films because I have seen all the ones that she made after this film: Hateship and Loveship and Elvis & Nixon. She has a more prolific television directing career, but I have not seen any of those shows. I am sure that they were great episodes.
I put Return in my queue without knowing anything about it because Michael Shannon plays the protagonist’s husband, and I would watch Shannon in anything. I just add all his movies in the queue and know that at some point, I will get around to watching them preferably sooner rather than later. He is a versatile acting American treasure, and in real life, on the side of the angels, i.e. a vocal opponent to Presidon’t. His role in this film is one of the few times that he gets to play a character that we would not run screaming from or cross the street to avoid, which is nice for a change.
Return is a great story that predominantly shows and does not tell. It is a slice of life familiar to us, but with an underexamined protagonist. There are plenty of films that focus on men returning home after war, but not women, and there are more women serving than ever. It never feels like a Lifetime movie. It feels like a documentary. It is a perfect example of how a handheld camera does not have to diminish the production quality of a film and actually enhances it by making the camera a participant as if we are there watching everything unfold. The choice of location and production design is pitch perfect. It is set in New York and has an organic, lived in feel that does not feel staged.
Return’s cast, although filled with familiar faces, embodied their characters fully. We were not there to watch Cardellini play a soldier, Shannon play a dad or John Slattery play a vet, but watching a soldier, dad and vet navigate life in imperfectly, but it is impossible for a viewer or even their fellow characters to write them off as villains or worthless because of their problematic life choices.
While I understand that Return was aiming to be more universally relatable in the protagonist’s difficulties in adjusting to homelife, it did feel as if Johnson punked out by refusing to give the viewer any explicit insight regarding the protagonist’s particular difficulties while being deployed. The protagonist just keeps saying, “A lot of people had it worse.” I understand that being specific may be unrealistic since sufferers of trauma are usually reticent. There is also a danger that being specific shifts the dynamic of the film from being a character study to being a movie with a message and an agenda which gets privileged over the actual people being depicted. For instance, if her trauma was rooted in sexual assault, it would be statistically plausible, but completely shift the trajectory of the narrative and root it more in the past than the present. We would be waiting for her to confide her story to someone, and every action that the protagonist would take would be read through that lens. So while I may not think that it quite works, I understand why Johnson would steer away from detail.
Instead Return is about the present, and a nameless dread of the past, her past regular life and life during her tour of duty, haunt her. It is as if life at home feels like a meaningless lie, and she can no longer pretend. The people welcoming her home are so extra exuberant that it is as if they secretly know it too. They know that they cannot meet her needs and are desperately trying to make up for it. A visual metaphor for this phenomenon is how she asks where an object was moved, but no one ever mentions how a window broke. Was it broken before she left and just never got fixed? Or is it new? Then why not complain that someone has not gotten around to fixing it or ask what happened? It is subtle, unspoken, but visual forefront issues such as this broken window that symbolizes the inherent problems of leaving and staying, especially when a person cannot be blamed for leaving, but still suffers the loss through inherent change and a shift in the familiar.
Return’s depiction of her new normal initially seems harmless, but is ultimately destructive. For those viewers hyper alert for any signs of mental distress, you will see early warning flags. Encouraged behavior that usually signifies celebration morph into the equivalent of Chekhov’s gun as the movie unfolds. When she finds her people, it is not necessarily a good thing although it is better than trying and failing to connect with her past. The past poisoning the present eventually transforms into a fear of the future.
When Return ends abruptly, it is devastating because while it puts an end to the literal unraveling happening before our eyes and the desperate attempt to reassemble some semblance of the life that she once wanted, it is not a hopeful end, but a bookend that simply closes the door once again. Things will probably not get better. They could definitely get worse. The denouement has no resolution. If this protagonist’s story is supposed to be a placeholder for the numerous vets whose stories remain unknown and untold, then it is an awful perpetual motion machine that grinds life out of its gears, making clean cut zombies unable to find nourishment.
If you like the director, the cast or the subject matter, I would definitely encourage you to watch Return, but it is not the kind of film that you multitask while watching. You have to give it your complete attention and really scrutinize what is happening on screen because all the information offered is shown, but do not expect it to be spoon fed through a lot of clunky prose. It is definitely not the kind of film to watch if you expect to feel uplifted, and it is not inspirational. It is difficult to watch someone lose their bearings and become self-destructive whom we are genuinely rooting for.