REVIEW: Leviathan

It seems like Biblical stories are pretty popular fare for Hollywood projects at the moment, between that weird Noah thing from earlier in the year and Ridley Scott’s new live action remake of The Prince of Egypt, otherwise known as Ancient Egypt: Now With More White People! (or Exodus: Gods and Kings if you’re being polite). With all that retrograde silliness going on, it’s nice to know that elsewhere in the film-making world, Biblical tales are being used in a more thoughtful an thought-provoking way.

Leviathan is the latest film by lauded Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, know for his haunting, emotionally charged character dramas. The story of Job heavily influences the story thematically, as it deals with corruption, self-destruction, submission and hopelessness (cheery, I know). It’s set in a rough, thorny little fishing settlement on the Barents coast and follows the trials of a put-upon mechanic named Kolya as he fights to stop his property being claimed and demolished by the hideously corrupt (and perpetually drunk) mayor. This is the kind of hard-edged Russia that would almost be stereotypical if had been made anywhere other than the motherland itself, the characters are impetuous, violent, emotionally guarded and they drink vodka like it’s unicorn blood.

The conflict between Kolya and the mayor is a battle of leverage, influence and cunning. Kolya enlists the aid of an old friend who happens to be a Moscow lawyer, while the mayor fights back with threats in the guise of his connections in organised crime. There’s certainly a satirical side to things, the corruption of the government and relative ineffectual nature of the police are recurrent themes, the mayor has a large picture of Putin in his office and during one amusing scene, after Kolya and his friends run out of bottles to shoot at, his friends produces a near-complete set of portraits of Russian leaders to serve as targets. There’s little in the way of hope through all the cynicism though and the characters are dragged helplessly from one mishap to the next, seemingly utterly unsurprised at their own misfortune.

There is a certain beauty in the starkness of it all, the cinematography favours long, mobile takes and lingering shots of the surrounding environment, which is framed in almost perpetual twilight. The titular leviathan appears both as a metaphor in the script and as hulking whale skeleton on the beach near Kolya’s house, intermingled with the similarly skeletal remains of old fishing boats. The pacing rarely jolts, as seemingly inconsequential scenes stretch on, often silently, allowing a deeper insight into the central characters and the schisms between them. Kolya’s son hates his stepmother, she in turn is drawn to the lawyer and Kolya himself is left to pick up the pieces, but most of the times he just gets drunk instead.

Despite being a reworking of a Biblical fable, religion doesn’t get much of a kind eye cast on it here. There is a priest character, who at one stage lectures Kolya and suggests that he submit to God’s will. Most of the time when he appears on screen he’s coating in grotesquely ostentatious Orthodox garb. His lengthy diatribes are a disturbing counterpart to the cold, stenographic line readings made by court officials during two pivotal scenes. Religion and government go hand in hand in Leviathan and neither one comes out looking particularly righteous. The characters on the other hand are perfectly crafted, tragically loveable and tangibly real. They’re calloused, broken souls who have had to fight for every inch and drink themselves into a numbing stupor just to get through the next day. This film represents perhaps the best drunk-acting I’ve ever seen, I felt so much empathy for Kolya during a late scene when he desperately tries to crawl out of bed, gripped by a vicious hangover as someone relentlessly hammers on the front door.

Leviathan has more than a few bones to pick. It maligns authority, decries the greedy and admonishes the corrupt, but is still resigned to the fact that those sort of people usually get away with it. The priest talks about the leviathan as a representation of God’s will, but really it’s the will of those with the power to push everyone else around. The old money, the man, the system. This is the kind of film that speaks volumes, then stacks the volumes a mile high, savages you with them over and over until all you can say back is THANK YOU SIR MAY I HAVE ANOTHER.