Now I’ve only just seen the movie, so I’m not 100% on these sortings yet, and if any long-time fans want to chime in, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
As a reminder, primary refers to a character’s motivations, and secondary refers to a character’s methods.
This sorting system was based on the Hogwarts houses, but we do not support JK Rowling’s bigotry here.
Goncharov: double lion (burned primary)
The tragedy of Goncharov is all about identity–specifically, the loss of identity. It’s about Goncharov losing touch with his internal compass: the mirror motif highlights this disconnect and confusion as he loses his identity to the violence of the film. The movie actually does a really good job showing the process of a lion primary burning.
His secondary, however, stays intact. Goncharov is loud–explosive, even. Even as he loses his internal sense of self, he continues acting out directly, projecting his internal dilemma outwards in a vain attempt to “solve” it through the direct action of violence. He deals with problems by breaking through them, repeatedly. He literally does not stop, for the entire four-hour run time–it isn’t until his death that he is finally still.
Andrey: bird/lion (bird model)
This boy is constantly stuck in his own head, philosophizing, trying to rationalize his feelings about Goncharov. He’s a bird. He likes being a bird. Bird makes sense. The world around him–not so much. He clings to his bird primary SO hard, he has trouble seeing that the world doesn’t always match up to the world he has in his head. He can’t incorporate his feelings about Goncharov into his model of the world–can’t understand Goncharov’s true motivations. In the end, that’s why he’s so blindsided by the Goncharov betrayal.
Now, Andrey’s bird primary is so loud that it’s tempting to put him in bird secondary, too. But for all his talk of books and philosophers, how do we actually see him solve his problems, when all the cards are down? He acts suddenly and decisively, stepping away from his book-learning and doubt, and steps into himself like he’s shedding a heavy, ill-fitting suit. I could see bird model for him, though.
Katya: snake/bird
Torn between her loyalty to Goncharov,
her love for Sofia, and her own ambitions, Katya is a loud snake
primary. She loves Goncharov, but she feels burdened by him and trapped in the life
that they’ve agreed to live together. Throughout the film, her
frustration with how trapped she feels in her own life brings her to
Sofia, and she’s tempted to run off and join Sofiya’s whirl-wind of a life for the taste of freedom that Sofia gives her. However, her decision in the end to betray them both ultimately speaks to her decision to value herself over either of her (canon and implied) love interests.
As far as secondaries go,
Katya is careful. She doesn’t run willy-nilly into things. She gathers
her resources quietly. She makes plans. Unlike Andrey’s spur-of-the-moment betrayal, when she leaves Goncharov, it is the culmination of a whole film’s worth of quiet planning, all falling into place. The biggest tip-off, for me, is the gun. If you’re watching carefully, you can see that the gun she takes from Goncharov and slips into her purse during the night club scene is the same gun she uses in her final scene, much later.
Sofia: double snake
The last part of the Gonchandreysofitya love quadrangle/polycule, Sofia is a double snake: healthily selfish, sneaky, unrepentant, and driven so hard by her love of Katya. Katya is really her one blind spot.
Growing up in the orphanage, Sofia learned early to trick and steal and con for a living, and she seems entirely content to live like that, taking pride in her abilities as a con woman and a thief. It’s only for Katya that we see her let down her masks and show off her true, neutral, jaded self underneath all of her other layers.
