THE STORY – The director of a Russian company is preparing to fire his employees. At the same time, he discovers that his wife is cheating on him.
THE CAST – Iris Lebedeva, Dmitriy Mazurov, Varvara Shmykova, Juris Žagars & Anatoliy Beliy
THE TEAM – Andrey Zvyagintsev (Director/Writer) & Simon Lyashenko (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 138 minutes
Acclaimed Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev has turned his gaze to politics in recent years, since his 2014 film “Leviathan,” because, in his own words, “politics has entered our lives and it’s impossible to detach ourselves from it.” His filmography, often focused on family issues, has served as a powerful canvas for illustrating who people really are beneath the surface, often producing a depressing, nihilistic view of the world. He has spoken about family as the place where human beings become “completely naked,” where individuals are forced to confront their own weaknesses, contradictions, and failures. His latest film, “Minotaur,” arrives after a nearly decade-long absence from feature filmmaking since “Loveless” (2017) due to an illness he suffered during COVID, which nearly claimed his life, and influence from the changing state of the world, particularly in Russia. Inspired by Claude Chabrol’s “The Unfaithful Wife” but moved to modern Russia amid the fallout of the Ukraine war, “Minotaur” is another unmistakably political, bleak, and methodical work from one of our best storytellers.
Set in Russia in 2022, Galina Morozov (Iris Lebedeva) is a beautiful woman married to Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov), a successful business owner, and they share an adolescent son, Seriosha (Boris Kudrin). Together, they live a very comfortable life as their beautiful lakehouse sits far removed from the anxieties and hardships affecting much of the country around them. Gleb works constantly, rarely spending time at home, never taking days off, and increasingly finds himself cornered by the political and social consequences of the war with Ukraine. Employees are fleeing the country in waves, many escaping to Georgia or elsewhere, while others attempt to continue working remotely. Business instability becomes one source of pressure among many for Gleb. When a demand comes down that he must hand-select fourteen employees to send off via military mobilization, he simultaneously begins suspecting his wife of having an affair. Now, his comfortable, carefully structured life begins slipping away. But Gleb is a well-connected and ruthless man of Russia. He cannot lose control and will use whatever he can to take back his life and return to that comfort zone, without a care for whatever else may be happening.
Zvyagintsev and co-writer Simon Liashenko cleverly use Chabrol’s framework not simply to tell another story about jealousy and infidelity, but to build a larger political fable about a man losing command over every aspect of his life. Zvyagintsev has spoken openly about how Russia’s military mobilization became one of the film’s essential triggers during the writing process. Suddenly, political events transformed what could have remained a chamber thriller into something larger and far more demoralizing at a time when those in power are asking workplace and national morale to be at an all-time high. And in Gleb, we see an embodiment of current Russian values: those in power make all the decisions for themselves, regardless of the cost. Inexperienced, innocent civilians are sent off to war while selfish, black-hearted men in power continue floating above all, as though they are gods flying high above the clouds in the sky, determining the fate of everyone beneath them.
There are moments where Zvyagintsev could not make the parallels clearer. Gleb tells his son while discussing problems with another kid at school, “You can only win with your brain.” Violence, according to Gleb, should only be a last resort and certainly not something you start. Intimidate if necessary. Control the situation as best as you can. Establish your authority and regain control, but do it smart. Never allow emotion to expose weakness. It becomes a philosophy that stretches far beyond parenting and later serves as a test for Gleb himself in the story. Will he obey his own words? Power protects power, and as long as you maintain control, you have the power to remain unchecked.
For Gleb, though, control is enduring life, not living it. The same, however, cannot be said for Galina. She increasingly feels like an accessory in her own marriage. Gleb never emotionally opens himself to her, neglects her needs, and leaves her trapped in the role of glorified housewife: cooking, cleaning, raising their son, and waiting for attention from her husband that never comes. One particularly revealing scene among Gleb’s friends at a restaurant with Galina perfectly shows the larger sickness infecting the minds of Russian men. What’s supposed to be a joyful evening with friends quickly devolves into derogatory jokes and displays of casual misogyny among the men. At the same time, the women are forced to sit there and politely smile and go along with it, reinforcing a vision of masculinity that many men, not just in Russia but all over the world, share.
Zvyagintsev understands that different social systems reflect everyday behavior. Nobody in “Minotaur” sees themselves as evil. They simply continue pushing on according to rules that already existed long before they arrived. Even the police seem defeated by this worldview. At one point, when looking into Gleb, they practically ask, “Why should we bother?” before casually deciding, “Let’s have lunch.” And so, even the most terrible actions become routine because that’s simply how life is. The world feels predetermined by those with authority, while everyone else has to adjust around them.
There is a sense of inevitability hanging over this meticulously crafted slow burn, where cinematographer Mikhail Krichman’s precise visual language focuses on moments and shots that may not generate the most immediate excitement, instead building a realistic, grim atmosphere. Krichman’s work resembles the cold polishness of a David Fincher film, observing events with an almost clinical eye, especially at a major turning point for Gleb, when the camera follows him through an extremely stressful afternoon, lingering on every small detail in his surroundings and what he does to get through the ordeal and back home. Some viewers may criticize the story’s predictability and its overwhelming misery for its own sake. There is little comfort or joy to be found here and even less hope. But Zvyagintsev has never been interested in offering audiences catharsis or easy answers. He presents people as reflections of the systems they live in, often broken, making the world around them feel meaningless.
While Dmitriy Mazurov gives an appropriately detached performance as Gleb, exactly what the role demands, Iris Lebedeva takes on the more emotionally upsetting role of the suffering wife, Galina. She repeatedly attempts to reach her husband, asking him to spend time with their family and pull himself away from work. Eventually, she resigns herself to a trapped marriage she feels powerless to alter, much like how the Russian citizens cannot change the outcome of whether or not they become drafted for the war. Much like those ordinary people being torn away from their families, being fed lies through propaganda, and with very little hope of ever returning to happiness, Galina can only continue enduring. To what end? Well, nobody knows the future, but it doesn’t look good.
Zvyagintsev has refused to explain the film’s title, but the symbolism of what a minotaur represents is pretty clear and applies well to the story Zvyagintsev is telling. In Greek mythology, the Minotaur (with the head of a bull and the body of a man) was not born evil. It became monstrous over time, transformed through human ambition, punishment, and cruelty. It lived trapped inside a labyrinth, feeding on sacrifice. It seems easy to suggest that Gleb is the monster and Russia is the labyrinth, or, in a grander context, the minotaur represents man himself and the labyrinth is the world around him. Either way, Zvyagintsev has left the meaning up to us, provided you wish to spend 135 minutes in the chilly, miserable hopelessness of it all.
