Star Rating:

Leviathan

Director: Andrey Zvyaginstev

Actors: Aleksy Serebryakov, Elena Lyadova, Roman Madyanov, Vladimir Vdovichenkov

Release Date: Saturday 30th November 2013

Genre(s): Drama

Running time: 142 minutes

From the director of Elena, The Banishment and The Return, Leviathan is the busiest and most accessible film Andrey Zvyaginstev has produced.

In a small fishing village on the Barents Sea, the hot-headed Koyla (Serebryakov) is in a legal dispute with the Mayor (Madyanov) and so calls on his former army buddy-turned Moscow lawyer Dima (Vdovichenkov) for help. They attempt to appeal a shifty council decision that has rezoned Koyla's property and enforces him sell his house at a low price - the rumour being the mayor plans to build ‘a palace' on the site. Dima and Koyla produce damning evidence of the mayor's corruption in an attempt to force him to rethink but the mayor, who has the police chief and judges in his pocket, sets about putting Koyla through a Job-like wringer...

Andrey Zvyaginstev takes a long hard look at contemporary Russia and finds only baffling bureaucracy, an inconsistent legal system, a hypocritical church, political corruption, and its reliance on violence. He doesn't think much if its history either: a hunting party produces framed pictures of Lenin, Gorbachev, Stalin and Brezhnev to take pot shots at (Yeltsin remained at home, a drunken shooter remarks, possibly because of they share a common weakness).

Is this the leviathan of the title? Something as big as all this is just shrugged off? A woman doesn't seem to notice the gargantuan thing moving in the water as she gazes out to sea, while the washed up bones of a giant sea monster are ignored by the weeping boy on the beach: these alien things, just like the corruption, are treated as everyday. But then no one is innocent. Koyla and Dima use blackmail, Dima and Lilya (Lyadova), Koyla's wife, have a clandestine affair, and everyone seems to prefer to succumb to venality and drink themselves into a stupor. "Everything is everyone's fault," says Koyla at one point.

Not unlike previous Zvyaginstev outings, Leviathan can go off the boil, as the story loses its momentum when two of his biggest characters are allowed to disappear. But one can enjoy the scenery during these uneventful moments. From the stark, snow-bitten mountains and rotting boats strewn across the harbour, the area is both dreary and beautiful that attracts and repels.

This dip in momentum is problematic but Zvyaginstev rescues proceedings in time to deliver a wonderful ending.