Leviathan

Director: Andrey Zvyaginstev
Cast: Aleksey Serebryakov, Elena Lyadova
Length: 140 minutes
Country: Russia

Out of the murky waters of the Barents Sea comes Leviathan, a searing portrait of Russia in turmoil by acclaimed director Andrey Zvyagintsev. Simultaneously a satire on the frightening level of corruption present in Russian politics and a straightforward story of a man enduring a personal hell (with intentional parallels to the Bible), it’s unlike anything to come out of Hollywood in a long time. Where small towns are typically considered the place where the communal human spirit shines, the coastal town of Leviathan is unforgiving, and the plight of the people is overshadowed by an oppressive behemoth of political power and greed.

consciously evoking the book of Job – we see Kolia stripped of everything he has, material and personal.

The film begins with a beautifully photographed montage depicting the coastline, where waves crash angrily onto sharp grey rocks, accompanied by stormy orchestral music. As we move further inland, the mood settles – the water becomes still, the music fades, and we are left with a series of decaying wooden ships, so ancient that all sense of humanity has been stripped from them. Even as we move into civilisation, the landscape is barren – the town we arrive at is sparse, almost dead, with the only hints of life being a lifeboat in the distance and a house with a light on in the foreground, the house we will soon learn belongs to our hero Kolia (Aleksey Serebryakov). These opening moments reminded me strongly of Calvary, which also presented its homeland as a barren, bleak place ravaged by nature, symbolic of a national culture ravaged by scandal and controversy. And while Russia’s problems are not solely religious (though this is a major part of it) we get a similar sense that this is a land which has decayed, and rising from the ashes is a civilisation built on altogether too shaky moral foundations.
The story of Leviathan concerns Kolia, an ordinary man who lives with his son Roma (Sergey Pokhodaev) and his second wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova). His property has caught the eye of pig-like mayor Vadim (Roman Madyanov), who wants to tear it down to build “a community centre”, and Nikolay has his former army buddy-turned-lawyer Dmitri (Vladimir Vdovichenkov) come down from Moscow to help him. Yet this only brings further misfortune to him and his family, and in a heartbreaking story – consciously evoking the book of Job – we see Kolia stripped of everything he has, material and personal.
One of the best tricks this film pulls is that, while there’s a lot going on beneath the surface, it never feels cloyingly political or preachy – the satire is rooted in what producer Alexander Rodnyansky describes as, “a story of love and tragedy experienced by ordinary people”. Some of the most incredible moments of the film can be read on multiple levels, such as the poster-worthy scene where Roma escapes to a beach decorated with the bones of an immense whale. Obviously it serves as a reminder of Russia’s decaying moral fabric, yet the scene is framed around the boy’s tearful breakdown as he questions his place in an unstable family dynamic.

Another brilliant sequence revolves around a vodka-fuelled shooting trip in the countryside. The mood threatens to sour when one character brings out portraits of Russia’s former leaders to use as shooting targets, but it’s played as a joke, and reminds us that Leviathan is filled with people who treat the past with hostility or indifference, perhaps because the present is so bleak that it feels safer to blame universally recognised figures of ire. At one point there’s a sly dig at Vladimir Putin – Kolia asks if there are any current Presidents to shoot, to which another replies, ‘there’s not enough of a historical perspective.’ When there is, however, I believe that Leviathan will stand proudly as the definitive film on the subject, which never sacrifices warmth and humanity to deliver its devastating social assessment.

Images: Artificial Eye