Leviathan Reviews

Every Zvyagintsev's work is met by us, Russians with these words"" This is chernukha, this movie is not about us". It is such a disturbing gift given to this director: you watch his movies and recognize people from your childhood, school, work, street etc. Highly talented and profoundly relentless to all our decaying society. Very true picture of Russian Orthodox church, who is always "buddy buddy" with authorities, claiming lands that do not belong to it, driving people from the land to make a space for new churches. Moral degradation and ubiquitous cheating on your husband/wife as modern norm - it is not surprising that most of Russians hate Zvuagintsev, it is just painful to watch in mirror. What else? Never ending drinking, screaming and rudeness of traumatized Russian women, sickening corruption and devastating feeling of unprotectedness from PROIZVOL.

If anyone had told me by watching this I'd be (somewhat) reliving the years I spent living (or surviving) in Russia, I wouldn't have given it a second look. Went through the entire thing, it depicts the way "things" go there and how they are resolved... Sadly realistic.

Subtle, good acting, great vital scope, cold coastal russian landscape used as well as Ceylan in "Winter sleep". Eliptical sometimes, long and static in other, but advances with hard beats. The leviathan whale, is a good motif, in skeleton and alife just in a glimpse.

Even though many of my fellow Filmclub members thought it was dark and gloomy, since I was a little bit more familiar with Andrey Zvyagintsev's work, I was expecting something actually even bleaker. I mean, it was still hardly a picnic, you don't really get a positive image of Russia as it seems that all the governmental workers are either incompetent or corrupt and most of the adult population seems to be half of their life completely drunk. Still, it was quite bearable and Zvyagintsev managed again to give some gorgeous shots and I thought that the directing was really solid. The actors did a fine job as well but, in my opinion, the wife's character was too ambiguous and eventually, you never really get the opportunity to understand her motivation behind her actions. I also had a hard time to get what the director was eventually getting at (apparently, it was a modern reworking of the Book of Job but since my knowledge of the bible is rather limited, I kinda missed that). Still, even though I still don't think I'm a huge fan of this director, it was definitely an interesting watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.