Review of Leviathan (2014) by Strikethree — 07 Nov 2017
This film has some impressive scenes of Russian urban landscapes, and the acting is good, but the message (and it is a "message" film) is crude. Russian politics is corrupt, the bureaucracy is corrupt, and so are the police.
The Orthodox Church is a force for evil. Your friends cheat with your wife and betray you to the police. Russian people don't just drink vodka, they put the bottle on their head and gulp it down. They do ridiculously stupid things, like try to blackmail the local political villain then get in his car with him and his thugs.
There is no subtlety in this film. It ends with a long sermon about Truth by the evil priest, as if we had not already realised that the film is about a hypocritically corrupt society. If you want to see a bleak film about post-communist East European life, skip this and watch the superbly nuanced Ida instead.
This review of Leviathan (2014) was written by Strikethree on 07 Nov 2017.
Leviathan has generally received very positive reviews.
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