Leviathan, the sumptuously bleak new film from Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return), is an epic set in a small Russian coastal town; a Book of Job-echoing tragedy of a common man unravelling from the unregulated wealth and power, as well as less perceptible forces.
It’s unmistakably a critique of Putin’s Russia, though its central character Kolya (Alexei Serebriakov) is too thorny to be reduced to a noble martyr, just as the film itself can’t be reduced to a single-minded screed. It’s a political film of blunt yet measured force.
Opening to the unsubtle but forceful imagery of waves crashing against jagged rocks under an overcast sky, accompanied by a pulsing Philip Glass score, Zvyagintsev establishes an unforgiving backdrop for his story, as well the hierarchy it details – individuals at the mercy of nature; or rather, the whims of a cruel, godless universe. It’s the actions of corrupt mayor attempting to repossess Kolya’s land that set the latter’s plight in motion, but Zvyagintsev gives the film’s deterministic plotting a cosmic scope through his shrewd use of ellipsis and off-screen space – like the films of Robert Bresson, key scenes of physical conflict are frequently suggested rather than shown, implying that the real struggle lies beyond the human drama that we’re presented with.
If this all sounds like the recipe for a wrist-slitting downer, don’t worry – it very much is. And yet, Zvyagintsev’s control of tone is such that a mordant comic streak organically emerges from the hopelessness, in the tradition of the best absurdist comedy (Kolya’s endless, precisely inventoried alcohol consumption is the best example of this – I felt hungover just watching him). If the film isn’t quite the masterpiece that it’s been trumpeted as, it has a grace and conviction to its gruelling vision of a world gone to the dogs, that makes for hypnotic ‘glad I’m not them’ cinema.
3.5/5 stars
Leviathan is in cinemas now.
