I fully agree with the another reviewer in that this is one of the best Russian film during Perestroika period.
I've seen this film only 7 years ago, in London, for my personal study of Russian cinema. I watched it again today with better image and sound,and noticed that "Sluga"has exceptional high technical and aesthetic quality for films made in last few years of USSR.
I've seen almost all the films created by the screenwriter A.Mindaze and the director V.Abdrashitov, but no other film was so consistent and went so far as "Sluga" did. Apparently the story of this film implicates human relationship and mentality of "Soviet" people. But the material(story)has been transcended into something deeper and universal thanks to the elaborated and beautifully composed plot and its very accurate realization on the screen. For the last period of Soviet cinema, it's amazing that they could keep such a distance from this socially motivated material and worked without any surplus pathos or too keen sensitivity.
The film is even beautiful in spite of the seemingly banal and ordinary details. Everywhere we can see Abdrashitov's masterful skill as a director. As a whole plot is rather complicated but easily understandable that is the achievement of A.Mindaze as a screenwriter. In addition, Denis Evstegneev's camera, V.Dashikevich's music, acting of O.Borisov and Yu.Belyaev is also in its best. We know that in the art of cinema such an coincidence happens very, very rarely and ones who have such luck in succession, are even less.
