Leviathan

The best film on at the cinema this week is Leviathan: catch it while it's back. Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s feature Leviathan is staunchly in the tradition of his previous cinematic masterpieces, The Return and Elena. As in his earlier films, Leviathan is a coarse, earthy social drama framed in solemn beauty by collaborative cinematographer Mikhail Krichman.
Loosely based on biblical figure Job, the devout man plagued by horrendous disasters, (the Coen brothers did the same for their A Serious Man), Leviathan follows the hardships of a struggling couple Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov) and Lilya (Elena Lyadova). In their small Russian town a sleazy and profoundly corrupt mayor is on a megalomaniac property binge; acquiring as many local properties as he can, by hook or by crook. In his sights is the household of Kolya and Lilya, a rickety humble building on the Barents Sea. Nevertheless Lilya, suspecting the mayor to be planning the construction of a vast palace, resists his persistent attempts to purchase the land. The mayor’s venal behaviour is clearly a satirical comment on the corrupt state of Russian government. And as the vodka and drunken shootouts begin to flow with equal regularity, Zvyagintsev’s movie delves deeper into a backwards Russian culture of male bravado.
Zvyagintsev’s political commentary is not to be overlooked. In one scene villagers gather around to shoot old pictures of Gorbachev and Stalin but refuse to shoot photos of recent political strongmen as one villager explains because, "there’s not enough of a historical perspective". But in spite of this biting satire, Leviathan appears to be first and foremost a human drama, exploring human insecurity and fragility in an unrelenting world. Kolya is trampled upon as much by his economic woes as by his familial ones - even his wife, it appears, has eyes for another man. But such adversity seems par for the course in the devastatingly bleak world Zvyagintsev conjures. Although it is unlikely to be a laugh a minute, humour and warmth are an ever-present force in Zvyagintsev’s work and audiences are sure to be both challenged and entertained in equal measure. 

Where to see Leviathan in London:
Check out the complete listings for cinemas showing Leviathan in London: Leviathan film times, London