Zaur Gasimli’s “Taghiyev: Oil” is the first film in a potential tetralogy, so it should come as no surprise that it plays like an extended first act. Azerbaijan’s 2026 Oscar entry, about philanthropist, oil magnate and “father of the nation” Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, is resplendent in its conception as a period biopic with the scale of mid-century Hollywood epic. However, its reverence for its subject overshadows most hints of human drama, yielding a work that skirts around critical examination and seldom manages to present Taghiyev with feet of clay.
The film is framed between two distinct moments of societal and economic transformation. It begins in 1922, after the formation of the USSR, and introduces Taghiyev (Qurban Ismayilov) as a “former millionaire” — and a forgotten recluse turned bitter — through the eyes of fictitious American journalist Jerry Thompson (Vadim Stepanov). Thompson is merely passing through and collecting anecdotes, but he’s heard tell of Taghiyev’s legend, which the elderly tycoon soon narrates at length, beginning in the 1870s, before the country’s economic boom.
Taghiyev is played, as a younger man, by Parviz Mamedrzaev, who crafts the role with prophetic kindness and occasional ferocity. Starving villagers reassemble in orderly fashion at his mere suggestion, as he offers a young girl extra helpings of grain. He’s admired by his peers and practically worshipped by the workers he conscripts into his burgeoning oil drilling business, though he’s also scorned by a local religious cleric who appears to warp the word of the Quran for murky reasons. Taghiyev is a holy man in the body of a modern capitalist, to the point that much of the movie’s drama surrounds his exploited workers bickering over whether they should demand to be paid fairly or simply trust that he’ll eventually strike liquid gold.
And yet, the film approaches these dilemmas is nearly noncommittal fashion, refusing to take a stance on Taghiyev too soon (or at all) beyond his spiritual aura. In framing this figure of flesh and blood through such a mythological lens, it transforms his tale into one of faith — that of his children and his employees in him, and his own, in himself — as the question of his responsibility toward each person is approached with a feather-light touch. That this story is narrated by an older Taghiyev perhaps lends credence to a self-mythologizing, but the movie’s journalistic framework is seldom literal (the movie often features flashbacks scenes Taghiyev is not a part of, and could not have seen). Besides, even if “Taghiyev: Oil” were about a man creating his own legend, the only takeaway here might be that he wasn’t a particularly noteworthy storyteller.
These in-world mechanics are perhaps too narrow a way to examine a film such as this. Rather, Gasimli’s story is one of national self-identification; its version of Taghiyev is far more symbolic than human, practically urging its Azerbaijani audience to place their faith in the idea of national unity at any and all personal cost. The real Taghiyev remains revered for what one might call righteous reasons, but this fictitious version of him — who we largely meet before he made his fortune — is too abstract to deserve the same treatment, despite Mamedrzaev’s careful, clinical performance that attempts to find humanity where the film at large does not.
The period-appropriate details — and occasional bird’s eye view of infrastructure on the verge of blossoming — are a treat for the eye, as are the process-oriented scenes of oil drilling, which recall the muck and violence of “There Will Be Blood.” Gasimli’s camera is tightly controlled, and he finds just the right moments to rush towards the unexpected. However, the beauty of his frame is counterbalanced by the dullness of the tale at hand: that of a figure etched in stone, unmoving, carved as a tablet for other people’s thoughts, opinions and beliefs, rather than as a person with many of his own.
