Return

Return is ultimately about the inner turmoil that a woman has on her return from her tour of duty. It's nothing incredibly original, but it's written and directed with enough sensibility and delicacy, and a woman being at the front and center may be something different for viewers. It works because it's never emotionally contrived and it never comes off as anything other than heartfelt and personal. What makes this as effective as it was were the performances. The entire supporting cast does some really solid work, but the praise belongs to Linda Cardellini, who gives a wonderfully understated and subtle performance. It's in her silent moments that she resonates the most with the audience, and she absolutely deserves a lot more mentions. She's either on par or better than several of the actresses in contention for awards. This is highly recommended because it deserves to put Cardellini on the spotlight, and I can only hope this gets seen enough in the upcoming months and as a result it gives her more career opportunities.

Liza Johnson's film is a beautifully etched drama about a soldier's return from a tour of duty. The opening scenes of delight to be reunited with her husband and family are soon forgotten as the story concentrates on how Kelli, the returning soldier, must readjust to her role as mother and wife.

One notable gift Ms Johnson has is her ability to hold a quiet contemplative interlude where Kelli is thoughtful and we are too. Pretty soon we get close to Kelli's mindset and how she works, and through this we get closer to all the other characters in her life. There is a lot of hard work put into many of the scenes in which Linda Cardellini (as Kelli) has to look at herself and others in what has fast become an alien environment. A driving under influence complicates things but then do so many of the events which unfold before us.

The acting of Ms Cardellini is superb throughout playing a flawed character alongside so many others but trying to show her love of her children. Ways of changing her circumstances come and go and we see all sides of Kelli as they do. Michael Shannon is as good as he was in Shelter too.

Not everyone will enjoy this film or even rate it, which is a pity. It is not obviously a film pitched at women, or anyone in particular, but it is a story loaded with emotion, profound arguments, prisms of perspectives, and a lot of thoughtful direction.

I rate it very highly because we can see the hard work the artist has put into this work as we see it hanging in the gallery. One day perhaps it'll get the recognition it deserves. I recommend it.

RETURN (dir. Liza Johnson) Linda Cardellini delivers a mesmerizing performance as a woman who returns from a tour of duty in Iraq to find that her old life no longer fits. The film is deliberately and ominously paced as she discovers the truth about her prior existence. Her job is 'a waste of time' (it is, and it was), and her husband seems to have replaced her with an 'angst free' woman. It's not so much that Iraq had changed Kelli, but more that she now realizes that life can be so much more than what is offered in her rural, small town existence. Her friends and family members think that she might have seen devastating or particularly grisly scenes of carnage, yet her most unsettling memory seems to be witnessing a jet plane completely filled with rubber gloves. Her biggest and unstated realization is how shallow and pointless all of their lives really are. When things seem like they cannot get any worse, her husband initiates a custody battle over their two young daughters, and then she learns that she has been redeployed. The film is a stark and heartbreaking portrait of a woman who has been placed in a devastatingly untenable position. MUST SEE.

Careful, subtle, artistic portrait of the inner conflicts and turmoil experienced by a woman soldier on her return home from war. From the beginning of her return to her family we see how there are things seriously troubling her that she herself can't put into words. We watch the external, behavioral effects of these psychological conflicts as she interacts with her husband and children who themselves have also been affected. Which war she returns from is not stated, clearly intentionally to show the viewer that this is not important. There is little external drama in this quiet, sensitive demonstration of the powerful psychological forces stimulated by military service in war, both in the service member and in her family. Liza Johnson gives us a movie that shows us a fictional character and her life yet has in every scene a ring of truth. This is an artistic achievement.

Wow it is clear that this is Hollywood view and that not one person with creative input in this film has ever served. in the military at all, much less in combat.

It is really an insult to imply everyone's marriage is broken or that all of us suffer from PTSD, when the data show these are small outliers and the average marriage of service personnel is better than people who live in southern California.