{"id":7,"date":"2007-07-18T13:37:53","date_gmt":"2007-07-18T03:37:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/07\/18\/film-review-the-return\/"},"modified":"2007-07-18T13:53:57","modified_gmt":"2007-07-18T03:53:57","slug":"film-review-the-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/07\/18\/film-review-the-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Review: “The Return”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Return<\/strong> (US-2006, dir. Asif Kapadia)<\/p>\n

Be warned — this commentary contains major spoilers. Don’t read this if you don’t want to know how the film comes out.<\/i><\/p>\n

In a depressing display of obtuse literal-mindedness, one reviewer quoted on metacritics.com dismisses this supernatural drama thus: “The Return<\/i> gets this year’s award for most misleading poster, with its image of an empty-eyed, gray-skinned zombie\/ghost that appears nowhere in the movie” (quoted from LA Weekly<\/i>). Yet despite the fact that there is no literal empty-eyed, gray-skinned zombie\/ghost in The Return<\/strong>, the image referred to encapsulates the film’s story, atmospherics and themes with considerable visual cannyness. Even the tagline — which may lead us to resent the fact that The Return<\/strong> doesn’t feature a vengeful Grudge<\/i>-like spectre if we respond to a film on the basis of shallow assumptions rather than what’s actually on the screen — is not inaccurate, despite the lack of a physically objective ghost. The connection between poster image and film is subtler than that. Even accepting that maybe such subtlety wasn’t the best marketing ploy, it’s a bit embarrassing when the publicity department has a more insightful grip on a film’s semiotics than a professional film commentator.<\/p>\n

— More —<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Return (US-2006, dir. Asif Kapadia) Be warned — this commentary contains major spoilers. Don’t read this if you don’t want to know how the film comes out. In a depressing display of obtuse literal-mindedness, one reviewer quoted on metacritics.com … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}