Leviathan (2015)
Drama
--- Subtitled ---
Tagline: It's always darkest under the shadow of corruption.
From Andrey Zvyagintsev, the acclaimed director of The Return (Venice Film Festival Golden Lion winner and Golden Globe nominee). Kolia (Alexey Serebryakov) lives in a small fishing town near the stunning Barents Sea in Northern Russia. He owns an
auto-repair shop that stands right next to the house where he lives with his young wife Lilya (Elena Liadova) and his son Roma (Sergey Pokhodaev) from a previous marriage. The town's corrupt mayor Vadim Shelevyat (Roman Madianov) is determined to take
away his business, his house, as well as his land. First the Mayor tries buying off Kolia, but Kolia unflinchingly fights as hard as he can so as not to lose everything he owns including the beauty that has surrounded him from the day he was born. Facing
resistance, the mayor starts being more aggressive.
Storyline: On the outskirts of a small coastal town in the Barents Sea, where whales sometimes come to its bay, lives an ordinary family: Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov), his wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova) and their teenage son Romka.
The family is haunted by a local corrupted mayor (Roman Madyanov), who is trying to take away the land, a house and a small auto repair shop from Kolya. To save their homes Kolya calls his old Army friend in Moscow (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), who has now
become an authoritative attorney. Together they decide to fight back and collect dirt on the mayor. Written by iggy
Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, April 29, 2015 -- Few films prove so capable of blending beauty and tragedy as well as Leviathan, Director Andrey Zvyagintsev's Russian-language film that tells the story of a
man forced to live under the boot of backdoor oppression with no escape to its whims of stomping down on him as it sees fit and always to its benefit. A story of personal tragedy brought on by corruption at the top, problems at home, and the character's
own inherent fiery and combative attitude, the film offers a bleak, often hopeless look at life that is in many ways the antithesis of the cheerier, positive, go-get-'em sorts that champion largely empty platitudes about living life to the fullest or
standing up for what's right. Life doesn't always -- if ever -- work that way. Leviathan takes the idea into full reverse and offers a vision of overwhelming bleakness, and it's a refreshing dose of honesty in a film world that's too often too
cheery and phony, playing on the emotions of the moment and basic human hope rather than providing a more realistic view of the way the world works.
Kolya (Aleksei Serebryakov) is in some trouble. A corrupt local mayor (Roman Madyanov) has pegged his small lot of land -- about two-thirds of an acre -- as the perfect spot to build the city's new communication center. But Kolya has deep roots on the
spot of land, not to mention a business and a home he shares with his son Roma (Sergey Pokhodaev) and wife Lilia (Elena Lyadova). He's getting a payout, but he's not pleased with the amount, and he's not happy with the entire process. He calls upon an old
friend named Dmitri (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), now a lawyer working out of Moscow, for help. Dmitri digs up a hefty file full of dirt on the mayor that he uses against him when the hearing doesn't go Kolya's way. But one thing they're all about to learn is
that the drones don't mess with the top and get into a war they cannot win.
The film's plot grows ever more somber as it hurtles Kolya towards its conclusion and his fate. The darker themes and sense of hopelessness are constant companions that, even in some of the cheerier sections or moments when it appears Kolya may see a
light at the end of the tunnel, are marked by an underlying sense of hopeless dread, accentuated by the movie's pervasive gray, bleak stylings. Indeed, the film's moody atmosphere helps shape the story well beyond its basic content, which is itself smart
and precise but accentuated by Andrey Zvyagintsev's keen eye for easy and precise cinematic landscaping that serves to emphasize the overpowering bleakness without feeling as if he's forcing the issue. The story is told with care and subtlety, hitting
hard when necessary but slowly building through gradual reveals and new dynamics that, ultimately, all point in the same thematic direction.
The movie is intimate in scope -- its focus is a small town inhabited by small men in the grand scheme of things, which includes even those at the top -- but feels larger than it should, playing with an unmistakable larger context that emphasizes a
broader look at the human condition by way of intimate isolation. The picture's embodiment of grim hopelessness has a certain universality to it, but even as the movie maneuvers through the trenches of Kolya's life, where every turn leads only to more
hopelessness, it does so without some off-putting sense of pity for the character. The film's greatest asset, arguably, is its focus, its refusal to compartmentalize, its brutal honesty that plays without gross, unbelievable plot twists that come just for
the sake of further beating down the character. In lesser hands, some of the story details would undoubtedly feel less connected and more like something out of the book of Job, a Biblical story that plays a central part in the film's thematic movement in
its final act. In Leviathan, Zvyagintsev's confident, effortless touch keeps the movie feeling purposeful and steady even in its darkest moments, which come towards the end. As it moves toward that end, the movie feels less like it's headed for the
proverbial light at the end of the tunnel but rather away from that light until it's completely gone, lost in the distance from it and the blackness that surrounds the now ever-lost soul who has been forced further and deeper away from it.
Leviathan isn't so much a character-driven movie as it is story-, theme-, and mood-driven, but the characters represent it well and are shaped by strong performances that underscore the greater pieces around them. Aleksey Serebryakov impresses as
the lead, portraying an embattled character who practically decays in front of the audience as he fights a hopeless battle against those who would see him ruined. He's combative and feisty but seems to understand, and maybe even accept, the underlying
hopelessness of his situation. The film benefits from a fantastic sense of real togetherness between its leads, which doesn't necessarily mean camaraderie but rather chemistry and deep, long-lasting, lived-in relationships that add a necessary depth of
scale and scope to their plight, to Kolya's marriage, his relationship with his son, and his dealings with Dmitri. The cast melts into the parts, practically becoming part of the larger environment by way of its near total tonal reflection of the world.
Roman Madyano is also terrific as the antagonistic mayor.
Leviathan is a film built around a somber tone that takes shape as it peers into the inescapable shadow of oppression and the common man's unchanging status as a pawn in a larger game out of his control. It's bleak but beautiful, a harrowing yet
captivating story of real-world life that's brutally honest, perhaps a little more extreme and morose than some audiences would be comfortable watching, but it's a wonderful film with a lot to say about the world in which man lives. Sony's Blu-ray release
of Leviathan offers good video, solid audio, and a well-rounded collection of extras. Recommended.
[CSW] -3.0- Leviathan is a film that riled up the Russian authorities. Rightly so. This is a story about widespread government corruption through the eyes of a man named Kolya. That said, I agree with this reviewer:
A drama will unfold on the outskirts of Putin's Russia, in a sad provincial town on the shores of a northern sea where the women rise early to catch the bus to their jobs at the fishery. The big fish in this miserable pond is a typical
post-Soviet provincial bureaucrat -- corpulent, ignorant, foul-mouthed, and unscrupulous. Who would even elect anyone like that? Who? And who's asking? Better not ask lest your already bleak life get outright unbearable. Instead, drink up and watch TV. A
piercing commentary on the life in present-day Russia. So beautiful and dignified a setting, and yet so devoid of hope.
[V4.0-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.
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