The barren, arctic sea-shore of a small town in Siberia transforms Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan into something more than a film about corruption - corruption in the human sense and in the sense of institutional corruption. Cosmic might be the word to capture the feel of it. The choice for the viewer is what level one should focus on. A theme that drives the overarching mythic tone is suffering. There are references to Job: why should I suffer? How can God allow this to happen? When I watched this movie, my friends and I disagreed to which extent these references are to be taken as direct questions borrowed straight from the Biblical story, or whether they have a more context-dependent and, thus, more ambivalent role. I haven't really settled my mind: is this film suffocatingly blunt, beating you on the head with a certain 'message', or is it more open-ended than what a cursory interpretation might suggest?
Kolja and his family live by the sea. Their home is threatened when the local - very crooked, very Yeltsin-lookalike - mayor makes claims on the property. Kolja's friend, a lawyear from Moscow, arrives to help his mate with his problems. There are dirty deals and also matrimonial infedelity. Kolja's life starts to break apart. Zvyagintsev takes a look at the vodka-fuelled structures of this small town, in which the mayor - constantly drunk - goes to see the priest every now and then, and is given a pragmatic piece of godly-worldy advice.
An essential theme of the film is what it means to stand behind one's words. In the beginning of the film, we see Kolja at the court. The scene plays out as tragic comedy: the jury reads the negative verdict in a furious-paced bureaucratic quasi-lingo: the voice of the woman reading it is completely mechanic. In the very end of the film, the priest delivers a sermon. There are bombastic formulations about the state and the church. The priest - who is he, what does it mean when he stands there before the bored/drunk parish, speaking those words?
Again: the overwhelming landscapes, underlining the vulnerability of the characters' lives. The mood of the film is established and kept up with repeated images of desolate cliffs, gray, restless sea and craggy whale skeletons. The cinematography is audacious, but not overly so. The music by Philip Glass is, however, too much - the film would have been better without it. Zvyagintsev's sense for immaculate composition is in absolutely no need of being doubled by Glass' fluttering score. (I am no fan of Glass.)
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