Zvyagintsev’s bleak indignation of Russia and the varying levels of crooked powers that govern it is thrillingly understated.
After an almost ten year hiatus due to a near fatal bout of Covid Russian maestro Andrey Zvyagintsev finally returns in predictably wonderful fashion with his latest state of the nation, Minotaur. Opting for a similar framework to his last film, 2017’s outstanding Loveless, Zvyagintsev uses one unhappy couple in turmoil to comment on the black hole at the centre of Russia’s broken democracy and the futility and cowardice of the oppressor.
In their swanky modern house out in the sticks, successful company director Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov) and his wife Galina (Iris Lebedeva) are struggling to keep their marriage together. Gleb has every reason to believe Galina is having an affair and they regard each other like a pair of ghosts, all while trying to raise their adolescent son Seryozha (Boris Kudrin), who is constantly glued to his devices. Russia’s war with Ukraine is ruminating away in the background and Gleb is suddenly tasked with formulating a draft list where he must pick thirteen of his employees to be deployed. When he receives irrefutable proof of his wife’s affair, the bubbling pot of problems soon boils over causing him to reach a dangerous breaking point.
There’s is an enthralling yet muted way Zvyagintsev approaches his material that has been present throughout his directorial career and it works absorbingly well here. He exercises a crucial level of restraint early on, making sure to build a brick house of lies, conflict and characterisation that makes the inciting grenade he chucks in completely morbidly fascinating. Even when the film decides to step it up a notch, there’s a glorious idiotic arrogance to Gleb and a chillingly mundane approach to a pretty serious matter that makes it feel like we’re watching a real situation in real time. Instead of melodrama Zvyagintsev knows that the violence that permeates the country causes this pathetic, egotistical moment of madness to speak for itself. He smartly fills backgrounds and forking paths away from the central problem with the pressures of the war and there’s a vicelike, volatile feeling to every moment and every decision devoid of bloated signposting. War begets violence and floods into the lives and heads of those that stand idly by.
While the film is hued with a grey, dingy tone that only adds to the desolation the performances of its central couple deepen this melancholy even further. Mazurov is outstanding as Gleb, a man barely capable of a smile but with a sense of overinflated status present in his decisions and almost inherent need for attention and things to go his own way. This is mirrored through Lebedeva’s tragic portrayal of Galina who has clearly fallen out of love with Gleb and their whole way of life but is also relatively happy to live off his money and avoid the deep consequences of the outside world. She’s justified in her unhappiness but she is also complicit in the silence and Lebedeva is striking in her flux of emotional states. Still, this shouldn’t absolve Gleb of his actions and it is this idea that people even in smaller levels of power in Russia can coast above the line of democracy and decency and come out the other side just fine.
4.5 / 5
Of course, there are many unhappy couples around the world, many stories of affairs and many critiques of oppressive states but it’s hard to think of a more incisive and authentic condemnation of Russian pressures than Minotaur. This is a devastating mix of competing factors that is a triumph of depressing cinema, it’s good to have you back Andrey.
