Review of Leviathan (2014) by Alberto A — 15 Feb 2015

Everything is calm, everything is pretty, and everything is peaceful in the first shots of Leviathan depicting the little fishing town of Pribrezhnyy in Russia. However nothing is actually calm, nor pretty, nor peaceful. Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, Leviathan is about a man who canâ??t take a break from the corruption of his town and he keeps getting screwed by the system, especially by the mayor Vadim, who is trying to take over his house and demolish it.

Leviathan is a modern mixture of the book by Thomas Hobbes of the same name and the story of Job, where a man called Kolya is desperately seeking justice in a town governed by corruption and he is punished by doing so. It is also a small scale representation of Vladimir Putinâ??s current regime in the Motherland (I mean, the extremely corrupt mayor has a picture of him in his office wall as some sort of idol). However, the film also criticizes the double standards of the Church and its hidden, but still active relationship with politics. Vadim the mayor shelters himself and his crimes with the most important priest in town who makes him feel he is doing good deeds for humanity. A character like Vadim can be easily found in most countries in the world; he incarnates the ever-present, undying face of corruption and power-thirst that will always defeat and destroy those who seek peace, justice, and thus the perfect society (or perfect Leviathan as Hobbes said).

One of the best things about Leviathan is its cinematography and its production design. The combination of both symbolically convey a criticism of modern law and government and loss of hope about the problem of corruption getting solved in this world. That image of the skeletal remains of a giant sea creature represent the impossibility of humankind building the perfect society; it is a beautiful but unsettling shot. All this wrapped around a beautiful script that carries the film with interesting and devastating dialogues and a quite subtle pacing that just creates more tension, which makes it a brilliant piece of storytelling.

There are Vadims everywhere, and as much as I want to say that the Kolyas are everywhere too, it is more likely that the Vadims will win most battles, just look at the world. This is why Leviathan is more big than Russia itself. Leviathan is a film about the world; it is a pebble in the sand, while the world is a giant rock, but both of them have the same foundation. This is definitely my favorite Russian film.