Russian cinema in the dark tradition.
Leviathan
Grade: A-
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev (Elena)
Screenplay: Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin (Elena)
Cast: Aleksey Serebryakov, Elena Lyadova
Rating: R
Runtime: 140 min.
by John DeSando
The Priest: “All power comes from God. As long as it suits Him, fear not.”
The Mayor: “And so, it suits Him?”
God may not be immediately apparent in the god-forsaken Russian coastal town of the rewarding film Leviathan, but the devil surely resides there. Or let’s just say the proletariat suffers for Politburo politics rather than God to an extent that is disruptive of daily life and lethal in the wrong circumstances. If you cross Crime and Punishment with a dollop of Dr. Zhivago, you might get a hint of how bleak and fateful this rugged world is, relieved by the beautiful timelessness of the landscape.
Kolya (Aleksay Serebryakov) is a vodka-swilling, perpetually smoking, car-fixing local doomed by the fates and his own temper. Not only does the corrupt local mayor, Vadim (Roman Madyanov), seem destined to seize Kolya’s property for a patronage resort, but Kolya” wife, Lilya (Elena Lyadova), is also carrying on with his close friend and attorney, Dimi Vladimir Vdovichenkov), and no good to come of either ill-fortunes.
I was captured the whole time by the sense of impending doom especially when director Andrey Serebryakov is featuring only decrepit buildings and sea wrecks. Given the Russian cinema tradition, those images are sure bets to represent the decay of a society that drinks and broods the whole long day. Not that it’s a bad thing; it’s just that doom creeps along at a petty pace as it circles victims like Kolya and Lilya, who are decent people but moved by passionate forces the emerge from the rocks and roiling sea. The devil is menacing, powerful, and relentless as it stalks its prey, notwithstanding the priest’s counsel that God is the one calling the shots.
Leviathan, like the titular skeleton of a whale that serves as a figurative touchstone, is long, slow, and dark, confirming a stereotype of hardscrabble Russians trying to survive under the portraits of Putin and Gorbachov, the old and new struggling for the heart of the country. Think of Appalachia joined with Montgomery; now there’s a whale of a comparison and this is a behemoth of a film.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
