It’s no wonder Kolya (a memorable Alexey Serebryakov), the main character of Leviathan, swigs vodka like it’s water. After witnessing an arbitrary and stiff, motor-mouthed reading of a local court ruling against him, it is no wonder an individual like Kolya comes to feel isolated and utterly powerless. It is not just that the insolent, antagonizing mayor of Kolya’s town is forcing Kolya to sell his seafront house in order to tear it down for profitable redevelopment. Adding insult to injury is the utter contempt and hatred the bloated-face thug of a mayor directs toward Kolya, matched in its intensity by the indifference of the legal system. Welcome to Putin’s Russia.
When Kolya brings the matter to the court with the help of a a lawyer friend of his from Moscow, he already knows he hasn’t got a chance of beating such an impervious bureaucracy. He just happens to be sitting on some potentially damaging dirt on the mayor. As suspenseful as it is, Leviathan is not a thriller in the traditional sense but rather transcends traditional genre leanings with outstanding character studies and vivid glimpses of a society tightly wound in its oppressiveness. The Orthodox Church also contributes to the stranglehold, as depicted in intermittent scenes with a priest who, in declaring the separation of church and state, indifferently equates a church uncaring about social issues with one that holds itself above mere earthly concerns.
Director Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, Elena) places Kolya’s second wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova, outstanding) front and center of the action. Her responses are an emotional array of frustration, confusion, and rage. Kolya is a temperamental, rigid husband and the more desperate he becomes the more unsettled Elena becomes over his increasingly erratic behavior. Kolya is at once a simple and a utterly complicated individual. His rebellion against the indomitable authoritarian forces never seems intentionally heroic but more part of an organic response from his unflinchingly principled character. His tragedy is that the goodness he possesses has no chance of ever driving out his demons as long as the sick society around him keeps pushing him further into despair.
Leviathan sneaks up on you. It’s a long, seemingly deliberate film that likes to cut to imagery like a menacing-looking whale carcass lying in the bay near Kolya’s home in a small fishing village on the Kola Peninsula, north of The Arctic Circle. As it progresses toward more and more numbing situations, Leviathan’s final twist is a total marvel and a finely jelling culmination of a portrait of a decaying society. It is no surprise the Russian cultural minister has had nothing but criticism for this film despite the critical acclaim it has received. In a ludicrous final irony, should Leviathan happen to win Best Foreign Film at next week’s Oscars, will the government’s statements about the film likely conveniently turn around 180 degrees?