After
a close friend endured a personal loss, screenwriter Adam
Sussman felt that he “wanted to write something about
the dead reconnecting with the living. Nothing was really
clicking until I came across scientifically documented
cases of very young children who had spontaneous memories
of things and people and places that they could never possibly
have known about.
"After doing more research and reading about the memories
and stories that these children were accessing, I found that
usually there was violence involved; a life had been cut
short – and there was a reason for The Return."
Using these stories as a foundation, Sussman created the
lead female character of Joanna Mills and then built a supernatural
thriller storyline around her.
Producer Aaron Ryder was immediately
drawn to Sussman’s
script.
“I tend to gravitate towards movies that are a little
more complicated than standard fare, and I hadn’t read
anything quite like this before," remarks Ryder. "The
Return is a terrifying story about being haunted, in a ghostly
manner, by things you don’t understand – and it’s
a haunting story in a different way, because it’s also
very much a love story of two soul mates trying to get back
together. The complexity of the psychological thriller aspect
also allows for an emotional core.”
In 2004, director Asif Kapadia signed
on to the project. The young British filmmaker’s
first feature, The Warrior, had won praise all around the
world, including two BAFTA Awards.
The director responded to the screenplay’s “creepiness
and suspense, and its series of layers. We unravel one, then
another, then another…and you learn that everything
has a motivation.”
Kapadia was also drawn to playing
up the elements of fate and spirituality within the thriller
framework. From his European perspective "it was essentially a very American
movie," he admits. "But it had a sensual central
idea of something spiritual, something otherworldly – which
excited me; I felt this was something I could hook into.
"Different people – in different religions – have
been brought up with the concept that people might die and
come back in another life in another form."
To tell Joanna’s story, Kapadia sought to create a
specific interpretation. Accordingly, he says, "The
point of view of The Return is that people are on some sort
of path and that we’re not all separate beings. Somehow,
there’s a force out there that links things up. You
can try to come back to correct something that happened to
you in another life."
Star of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
The Grudge, Sarah Michelle Gellar plays Joanna. Gellar
notes, “When we first meet
her, she’s fairly lost; living her life, but not experiencing
it. She had a rough childhood, ran away, took a job that
she wasn’t necessarily passionate about but was good
at – and allowed her to travel, so that she was never
in one place long enough to worry about belonging. But things
start happening, and she starts to deteriorate very quickly
and goes on a frightening and passionate journey. She does
violent things to her body; I spoke with people who have
done what she does to herself, and we discussed the pleasure/pain
principle. First comes pain, and then a euphoria.”
When Gellar first met with Kapadia,
their conversation was more about concept than about the
actual story. As Gellar relates, "I think we were both fascinated with its underlying
Buddhist themes of life, that life is cyclical; you come
and live your life and then you come back and fix the things
from the past. The Return is about how you need to finish
your life before you can truly transcend to what is essentially
the next life – and what happens if you don’t
finish what you were meant to do on Earth. If emotions carry
over, what happens?
“One of the things that I particularly liked about
Joanna was that she speaks so well for everybody – young
girls, middle-aged women – who understands what it’s
like to not belong. She feels that she never did belong,
that her place was never her own – and then finds out
that these feelings are true. She takes action to find her
identity and find where her place is."
Whilst the casting process happened,
Kapadia was already planning the movie’s visual scheme. He explains, "I’m
pretty obsessive about making sure things look interesting
and look right. For The Return, I wanted a dynamic, dramatic,
and scary look.
"I’m a bit of an old-fashioned filmmaker in that
I like to do things in-camera. Less is more, as far as I’m
concerned. I wanted to create a subtle uneasiness and have
the audience be scared and afraid, but in an original way.
I’m a big fan of Polanski and Hitchcock – movies
where there’s something that makes you feel uncomfortable
but you’re not quite sure what it is.”
To achieve the desired look, Kapadia
recruited a key collaborator from The Warrior, cinematographer
Roman Osin, to the project, and both worked closely with
production designer Thérèse
DePrez. The director explains, "To me, the visual side
of a movie is an important part of the process. Our intention
here was to slightly play with the mind and with time. The
present-day portion of the story is meant to be more unsettling
than the flashback portion. We have
different looks for each period, but there are visual parallels
we’re creating.
“Even when you’re in daylight, there is a lot
of black in our frame. You won’t always see every corner
of the image.”
Kapadia, DePrez, and location manager
Robbie Friedmann traveled a combined 3,000 miles and scouted
30 towns throughout Texas to find the right shooting locations. "Asif was very
excited about coming here. Each town had such great character
and history," recalls DePrez. “Also, there is
a certain palette and a certain quality of light in Texas
that really doesn’t exist anywhere else; the way paint
ages, the way things are colored, the Mexican influence – all
very appropriate for our picture. You also have this very
industrial rust that’s been completely overgrown with
nature. There’s a beauty to it, but there’s also
something frightening about it – especially if you
don’t know it well, which Joanna doesn’t."
Gellar reflects, “Asif found it all so magical; that
rubbed off on everybody else. He brought European flair to
this American story. Another thing I like about him is that
he’s always right in the middle of it. Some directors
will sit in their little tent in video village and yell out
notes from there. But Asif is the one crouching in a corner
underneath a black blanket, in the heat, so that, with nobody
seeing him, he can be close enough to see an actor’s
face – what they’re saying and what they’re
not saying. I think it makes for a better performance.”
Kapadia reports, “I’ve never worked any other
way; I like being next to the camera and being able to talk
to the actors. If you’re looking at something on the
monitor and there’s something going on in the corner,
there’s no way you’re going to catch that – until
it’s on a 50-foot screen. You also can’t always
see the actors’ little details and expressions on a
monitor, and that’s my job too.”
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