Minotaur

If you are a ROMANTIC see this movie. If you are not --- stay away.

First off I loved it. It is dark, modern, and forces contradictions on you. Like living in todays world. Where everybody is killing each other for their own good.

The film is a variant on Romeo and Juliet except that Juliet doesn't get to meet Romeo --- exactly.

Juliet appears to be a graduate student in New York with an artistic nature. Romeo appears to come from a cultured background, is well read in poetry and music and practices a profession which is called "wet work" these days.

Romeo observes Juliet from a distance and writes her letters. Their only real "contact". In the hands of a different kind of film maker this story would descend into an awful obsessive-love/stalker piece of crud.

This film manages to steer clear of that polarity but makes no bones about the "unhealthy" environment in which Romeo moves and operates. It also shows us that Romeo's love at a distance --- which gives him hope --- is destructive to Juliet.

Ultimately what this film is about is posing a question: "In murderous times like these how can we expect to experience the beautiful things which fairytales tell us are real, good and true and ought to be our lot?" Worse, how can we expect "beauty" itself to survive?

A previous reviewer drew an analogy between MINOTAUR and ROMEO AND JULIET. Well, not really. There's no feud between Alex's people and Thea's, Thea freely takes up with other men, and the personal attraction isn't mutual. The more direct analogy is with THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. In fact, there's a masquerade ball scene that pretty much shoves the PHANTOM parallel in our faces (was it intentional?). Did Alex's invisible psychological control of of beautiful, artistic Thea strike the film-makers as PHANTOMish? The differences, aside from the contemporary setting, are that Alex's deformity is moral rather than physical (this phantom is a homicidal Mossad "spook"), there are two sequential Raoul de Chagnys, and Thea, unlike Christine, is a modern screen character who segues seamlessly from first kiss with a new beau to hot bedroom scene. The movie itself is fairly gripping; I don't rate it highly because the final scene, where the Mossad agent simply dumps all his training, wasn't believable and looks like a perfunctory wrap.

I discovered Minotaur by accident when it started playing on HBO channels in October 2001. Seemingly unheralded except for an incorrect two-sentence prologue from HBO, I feel it deserves far more attention than that.

The central character is Alex, an Israeli Mossad assassin operating in New York City. Like the Picasso print on his childhood bedroom wall, Alex has become a Minotaur; part beast, part man, for he is also a soulful romantic. Both are legacies from his mother.

Happiness had been out of reach for Alex until he sees Thea. She is a student of classical music and Spanish literature, and a purer version of his mother.

Fearing endangering Thea, Alex watches from a distance but cannot resist moving closer and closer. He leaves incredible love letters and gifts for her in places no stranger could. He includes a book of Picasso prints with "his" Minotaur drawing and a Luis de Gongora poem about two hearts in one body. Thea is deeply moved and cannot understand why he stays apart.

As he realizes much later, he was a coward not to have left his old ways behind when he first saw her --and the more time that passes, the more dangerous the conflicted situation becomes.

The ending, like the events leading to it, echo the Gongora poem and Minotaur drawing, whose symbolism had always held-out more than one possible meaning for their relationship.

The use of art, literature, music, and history to impart deeper meanings to situations is very well done. So is the interplay of shadow and light, down to Alex's stubbled or clean-shaven face, reflecting how far in or out of his dark world he is.

Rather than following a linear time-line, the film unravels Alex's emotions. The story moves between 1963 and the mid-1990s, from a beautiful rural home in Israel (that seems to have once been a Palestinian home) to the buildings, streets, and skylines of NYC.

Mostly in English, Minotaur is an Israeli production based on the book by Israeli author Benjamin Tammaz. The core references to the perils of the deepening chasm between utter brutality and hope speak to the conflicts there and elsewhere more than ever.

The film's star, co-writer and co-producer is Dan Turgeman who used to sometimes use his Sephardic looks for roles in English-language films that negatively stereotyped Muslims. He may have perhaps needed the work as a younger actor, but this is a welcome change.