Nostos: The Return

reibureibu4.5

Experiential cinema through expression more ancient than language, Nostos: The Return is a minimalist take on a maximalist story; the Odyssey is taken to its most humble form yet as such reborn through the medium of film.And so Franco Piavoli understands that sometimes it's the fundamentals which are the crux, the great scale of an epic pared down to only the basic components. A single blade of grass swaying in the gentle breeze, a flock of gulls overhead cutting through the sky, a lone pond dotting the arid sun-bleached land, a reflection of the moon engulfing we who swim in its depths. When such simplistic beauty overwhelms us, suddenly the greatest human deeds seem pale in comparison.Such realization can only be made sans the battles, the conflicts, the clash of human wills. What we're left with is a proverbial "smelling of the roses" and the legend deconstructed, a reminder that sometimes what we remember most are the glimmers of introspection along the way. Not even the gods can overpower such splendour.Through the fires of invention this tale is reforged anew, and as our hero wanders through his lonesome world so too do we drift along. A timeless narrative gently unwound, a mythology made not just real but immersive, a solitary journey that we all find ourselves making.Nostos, nostalgia. It will always take you back home.

SilentDawn4.5

83Left me shaken. These images...holy mackerel! Takes a relatively simplistic version of the story's thematic underpinnings as the basis for extrapolating on the poem's grand tactility and nostalgia. Less than ninety minutes long and my heart was aching by the end.

Shea5.0

Freakishly beautiful, otherworldly textures - an ocean like some alien terrain, a sky much the same - all beholden to a raw celestial power that never dissipates for a second but opens itself up to something more grounded, more tactile, more of the earth, as nature takes its hold. There is no path here, but there is a journey, through tranquillity, desperation, comfort, longing, the sensual and the remote; the circuitous passage of dreams and memories that send you not forward, not backward, but through one door to the next, where the narrow caverns of your life meet the sea, and all that lies beyond.