One of the first things you notice about “Minotaur” is how much space there is in it. Uncrammed domestic interiors give the camera enough room to scrutinize details in stalking, unimpeded pans; modern gray office suites appear half-furnished and half-empty, as if the company is either moving in or dying out; public streets and housing estates are so uncrowded, it feels you could practically commit a murder in broad daylight; in a family man’s tank-like Volvo, the back seats fold down to create enough cargo space for a bicycle, or a body. Exiled Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s majestic new film may be shot by necessity in Latvia, but that country fills in most persuasively for his homeland, conveying both its aggressive vastness in the midst of a war that seeks only to further expand its borders, and its eerie depopulation, by people either fleeing or being called to battle.
Returning Zvyagintsev to the Cannes competition, where “The Banishment” (2007), “Leviathan” (2014) and “Loveless” (2017) were all awarded, the director’s sixth feature is his first since the latter title — ending a nine-year gap that spans, among other things, a certain global pandemic that nearly took Zvyagintsev’s life in 2021, leaving him paralyzed in hospital for months, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the next year. The world is quite a different place, in other words, from when this most politically and historically conscious of filmmakers, now based in France, last stepped behind the camera; there is some catching up to do. Teeming with rage, despair, elastic metaphor and darkest gallows humor, “Minotaur” is very much up to the task.
