Zvyagintsev's Minotaur moves a Chabrol classic to rural Russia
Andrei Zvyagintsev's new film Minotaur transplants Claude Chabrol's Le Boucher into the Russian provinces, and it is far more scandalous than the original.
What happens when a French classic moves to the Russian provinces? Andrei Zvyagintsev has just answered that question with Minotaur.
The film reworks Claude Chabrol's thriller Le Boucher (The Butcher), the story of a small-town murderer and a schoolteacher. Chabrol's version caused its own stir in France. Zvyagintsev's goes much further.
The reviews describe Minotaur as far more scandalous than its model. One detail says a lot: in this version, the killer sends witnesses to the front. Nobody gets silenced quietly here. The war becomes part of the machinery of the crime.
Zvyagintsev is no newcomer to provocation. His film Leviathan won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in January 2015, and it also looked at power and small-town Russia.
So if you like your thrillers dark and political, and you know your Chabrol, this one is clearly worth watching.
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