I’m a big fan of French playwright and filmmaker Florian Zeller. His drama The Father blew me away. With a keen knack for dialogue, Zeller is unafraid to dig deep and lay bare the parts of ourselves that we’d prefer to remain hidden; his character-driven films tend to focus on that particular moment in life when those feelings, desires, and physical needs have no choice but to surface. The experience of watching his features can be heart-wrenching, thought-provoking, absorbing — sometimes all at once — but never exploitative or dull, with Zeller avoiding the easy trap of sentimentality or emotional manipulation.
Zeller’s latest feature, Bunker, is the first one not based on his own work, but rather inspired by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat’s 2010 film El hombre de al lado. He seems reinvigorated, delving into new territory, delicately tackling broader subjects like global warming and the growing divide between the rich and poor, but never losing focus on his primary objective: to get inside the protagonists’ heads and explore what drives them. In this case, it’s marital woes.
Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz play the central couple, Miguel and Sofía. Miguel is a world-famous architect who is offered his most lucrative project yet by tech billionaire Andrew (Paul Dano): to build a grandiose, elaborate bunker, one that could host dozens of people and contain things like a spa. Sofía, a literary agent who gave up on her dreams in order to relocate from Madrid to London with Miguel and their two daughters, has a “come to Jesus” moment, appalled at her husband even considering the offer. Sofía’s sound logic: billionaires build bunkers because they have destroyed the world from which they now need to hide; profiting from one of them would be heinous — especially considering that Miguel is at a point in his life where he can freely choose his next architectural masterpiece without worrying about finances.
Things intensify when their next-door neighbor, Toby (Stephen Graham), converts his garage into an art studio. Much to Miguel’s chagrin, Toby’s carved a window into the side facing the couple’s garden. Miguel won’t have it, threatening to sue. A power imbalance quickly emerges, leading to a charged confrontation — and a further, deeply meaningful development. The family cat goes missing, Miguel suspecting Toby. A hunk of an emerging writer, Jeremy (Patrick Schwarzenegger), casts a profound spell on Sofía. It all leads to a gripping finale that some may find a little forced — but it resonated with me, not even because of what happens but because of what Zeller is saying. It’s certainly one of the most thought-provoking, sophisticated films of the year.
“…power imbalance quickly emerges, leading to a charged confrontation…”
One could also argue that it’s easy to take potshots at the rich, things like art galleries and absurdly overblown architecture and five-course meals at Michelin restaurants, but Zeller is too clever for simple finger-pointing, entangling the overarching themes into the minutiae of the plot — a narrative symbiosis, if you will. His carefully planned-out shots reflect Miguel’s architecture. There’s tension and drama, but also biting humor that satirizes the “perils” of being wealthy, such as enduring pretentious art at a gallery or installing — and then experiencing — a next-gen alarm that emits smoke if there’s a break-in.
Sharing the screen for the first time in their decades-long marriage, Bardem and Cruz unsurprisingly ignite it with performances both fiery and subtle. The camera loves them, each nuanced flicker of expression communicating more than even Zeller’s splendid words can. It’s truly a joy watching Bardem grapple with his built-up persona. Cruz mesmerizes as she, too, goes through tremendous inner turmoil, reevaluating her choices. The supporting cast, particularly scene-stealer Stephen Graham, is uniformly excellent.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. Tech billionaires are destroying our world. Money turns us into monsters. Marriages are difficult. (To paraphrase Sofía’s beautiful sentiment: “Marriages that last are fragile and are treated as such, whereas when treated as sturdy, a marriage doesn’t tend to last.”) All age-old sentiments, but in the hands of Zeller, these familiar ingredients feel newly resonant. We’re all stuck in a bunker, and we can either learn to preserve the foundation we’ve built, or continue to poison it.
"…satirizes the 'perils' of being wealthy"
