The Return

I realized (as I sat at my desk procrastinating) that there are many similarities between Zvyagintsev's film and many of the Tarkovsky films. Many of the shots in todays film (The return) seemed to mimic the shots of Tarkovsy's Mirror. The first shot that is similar is in the second scene when Ivan's mom is sitting on the porch smoking all alone. She seems to have a concerned look on her face just as the woman in Mirror did. Actually story line the first few scenes imitates Mirror exactly. That is, to say, both films have a father unexpectedly come home. Strangely enough, both films have a young boy flipping through an old picture book. I'm not sure if the shots of telephone poles were supposed to represent the tall crosses, that are in Tarkovsky's film, but seemed to resemble them nonetheless.

Each film also featured symbolism and contrasting images (at least it seemed this way to me). Throughout the entire movie there is a lot of the color blue. At first this seemed like a coincidence but as it kept reoccurring I started to think it must have meant something. While I was procrastinating I kept thinking about this blue color and the only thing that came to mind was water. In a strange way it seemed as if this was foreshadowing of what was to become of the father. It always seemed like he was surrounded by blue (an example of this would be the bedroom in one of the opening scenes because everything was blue). It is curious that he was always surrounded by blue because he ended up in the bottom of a blue ocean.

One other example of symbolism that I feel was rather prominent was the birds. I could not get the image of the dead Sea Gull out of my head because it just didn't make sense. This was the case until I remembered the scene when they are on the dock having fun. I mean the scene where Andrey gets out of the car to take pictures of the water and his surroundings. While this is happening the father is doing something unknown and Ivan is playing (or spying) with the father's binoculars. In one of the binocular shots Ivan is looking at all of the birds flying around, very much alive. These contrast the dead Gull (obviously because one is alive and one is dead). I feel that this was supposed to serve as a warning for what would happen on that beach eventually. The bird appears to have simply fallen out of the sky and not returned just as the father falls and does not live.

One more question...What was with the metal box?