Leviathan (2014)
Cast: Elena Lyadova, Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Aleksey Serebryakov
Directors: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Country: Russia
Genre: Drama
Editor’s Notes: Leviathan is currently out in limited release.
The film begins and ends with a montage of the spaces in which the story takes place, moving from water to land: the sea, rocks, a river, flat terrain where only puddles of water remain, wooden carcasses of boats and structures, even the bones of what seems like the titular creature. Between the beginning and end, the greater landscape does not change, unmoved, indifferent, and far away from the bustle of a big city. But the landscape’s coldness belies the story of a family that is literally and physically dismantled, due to a combination of interior and exterior forces. Andrey Zvyagintsev takes the premise of a mayor who wants to own the land on which a man has built his family’s home to present a most absorbing portrait of small-town community, marked by bureaucracy, strong-arm tactics, equally heavy doses of religion and drinking, and the blurred lines of private and public. In particular, through the family head Nikolay (Alexey Serebryakov), who finds himself not only at the center of the conflict over land but also eventually tension within his family, Zvyagintsev relentlessly tackles a cutthroat survival-of-the-fittest mentality that is both specific to Russian politics, culture, and society and applicable elsewhere in the world.
Zvyagintsev relentlessly tackles a cutthroat survival-of-the-fittest mentality that is both specific to Russian politics, culture, and society and applicable elsewhere in the world.
Zvyagintsev devotes substantial time to introducing the main characters, their respective positions and motives, and the spaces in which they live, as a way to immerse the spectator in this insular region of northern Russia and its ways. We enter it with Nikolay and his lawyer friend Dmitry (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), just arrived from Moscow. Through them, we get to know Lilya (Elena Lyadova), Nikolay’s second, younger, and increasingly alienated wife; his son Roma (Sergei Pokhodaev), filled with loathing and angst towards Lilya; their no-nonsense friends Angela (Anna Ukolova) and Pasha (Alexey Rozin); and Vadim (Roman Madyanov) the mayor. While the subject of land invites verbal and dramatic confrontations, the film itself prefers conversations that are chess match-like and intellectual (between Dmitry and Vadim about the latter’s secrets that would ruin him); tipsy and/or unexpectedly absurd (between Nikolay and Vadim on the former’s property; between Vadim and his three colleagues to get back at Nikolay and Dmitry for the secrets they have unearthed); an endless, bureaucratic drone (as in the judge’s pronouncements of rulings against Nikolay’s favour); and philosophically moralist (between Nikolay and the town’s Russian orthodox priest). In fact, Zvyagintsev’s clinical, intense focus on these characters’ relationships at the level of the everyday makes the land conflict less the subject and more a segue to a study of a collective psyche that is breaking down, little by little. And the bleak yet striking surroundings that Zvyagintsev intermittently shows—especially the ‘fossils’ that speak to the area’s lively past as a coastal town—only reinforce this breakdown.
Zvyagintsev maintains a steady boil of strain, anxiety, and uncertainty throughout the film that paradoxically has a more powerful effect.
Contributing to this breakdown is the increasing tension within Nikolay’s family that gradually parallels the land conflict between Nikolay and Vadim. As Nikolay and Dmitry’s individual and collective efforts towards his case find nothing but dead ends, Nikolay becomes all the more riled and possessed by it. As a consequence, Lilya turns to others for emotional connections and, in turn, her actions cement all the more Roma’s negative attitude towards her. One of the film’s most poignant sequences is of an outing organised by the family’s friend Stepanych (Sergey Bachurskiy) for his birthday, which concludes with a dramatic confrontation between Nikolay, Lilya, and Dmitry, witnessed by Roma. But therein lies the rub: Zvyagintsev does not show this confrontation, in keeping with the film’s more muted and subtle approach to the volatile issues that it addresses. In this way, Zvyagintsev maintains a steady boil of strain, anxiety, and uncertainty throughout the film that paradoxically has a more powerful effect.
This same sequence of Stepanych’s outing with Nikolay, Lilya, Roma, and their friends also contains some of the satirical humour that is found at various points in the film. During target practice, and considerable drinking, Stepanych reveals some of the targets that he brought: framed pictures of former Russian statesmen, such as Lenin and Gorbachev. Stepanych then explains the necessity of historical perspective when choosing among the country’s former presidents, hence the absence of more recent figures. Coincidentally, this scene recalls the first one that takes place in Vadim’s office, where a framed picture of Putin decorates an otherwise empty back wall.
Significantly, the film also plays with this notion of historical perspective and past-present contrast in other ways. From the point of view of the town, Nikolay’s photo of the coastal town’s more vibrant days filled with boats contrasts with the town’s now empty, silent demeanour. From the point of view of religion, the ruins of a church in the middle of a seemingly empty field, where teenagers like Roma hang out at night to smoke and drink, contrasts with the Russian orthodox priest’s role as spiritual advisor to the likes of Vadim, his family, and colleagues. Zvyagintsev injects these contrasts into the film’s overall visual scheme in a consistently restrained manner, which nevertheless contributes to the film’s depiction of a broken psyche.
Weaving together the religious and secular, the historical and contemporary, the personal and political, and the private and public, both narratively and visually, is no small task. Zvyagintsev and his cast achieve this blending of contrasts in understated ways that is nothing short of mesmerizing.
Weaving together the religious and secular, the historical and contemporary, the personal and political, and the private and public, both narratively and visually, is no small task. Zvyagintsev and his cast achieve this blending of contrasts in understated ways that is nothing short of mesmerizing.
