Summary
I choose the movie “The Return”, this movie made me remember my past and I couldn’t hold my tears since I had a similar experience with my father. The movie is about a father and son having some difficulty of how to express their love for each other. It is a love and hates relationship, a very complicated relationship, and at the end, you could see how the young boy Ivan faced his fear.
The Return is about a father that was gone for 12 years and expecting not to have a reaction from his kids. After so many years he comes back to their life like nothing happened, creating confusion for Ivan that was a baby when his father left him and his older brother Andrei. It is hard to love a stranger and that stranger is your father. It is sad to see the confusion on the kid's face, in one blink their life change. Ivan battles his fear of high, water and the bullying of his friends.
They didn’t even remember their dad; they run to see the pictures that were kept as memories, it was impossible to remember since they were little. The two little kids were confused in different ways one is irritated, resentful, and mad and the other seems to be happy, thankful, and probity desperate to have a father's love. It is very interesting how both approach their emotions and it seems the kids were craving for a father figure in their life.
In the movie, the mom was only seen at the beginning and the grandmother too but what caught my attention was the way the grandma's facial expression, like saying oh kids let's see what is going to happen when they see their father. Andrei's reaction is that he wants to spend more time with his dad; he wants to know him more and gain his trust. The two boys are creative, inspired, and sensitive and take turns writing in a shared diary, which I found very interesting. They were clearly brought up well by a loving mom and grandma. However their different reaction is normal to their “Papa” come their different emotional responses to the pain, suffering, and torment that was always there for missing the father figure in their life.
Ivan's behavior towards Andrei and himself is like trying to protect each other from this stranger that is taking over their life. The father is trying to be a dad for the kids but he doesn’t have an idea how to do it, he wants to teach the kids a lesson but he is using violence toward them. My question is where he was all this time?
In the movie, we could see how difficult is for some men to express the love that they have for one another. Understanding the relationship between father and son can be very difficult, sometimes it is hard to describe and it was hard for Ivan to demonstrate to his father that he really misses him so he was acting rebellious. We see at the end how Ivan runs inside the beach trying to get his father's body, he didn’t notice he when inside the water but he screams for his “Papa”. He didn’t want to lose him again even though his father was death; sometimes you don’t know what you have until you lose it.
In my own opinion and experience sometimes we need to open up and let the other know how we feel, I know it could be hard but we should always try so at the end we won't have that guilt.
