You Can’t Hook a Leviathan, The Leviathan Hooks You

Leviathan (2014) is not for the faint of heart. Director Andrey Zvyagintsev reminds his audience of the brutal reality of living in modern-day Russia in this slow burn, an allegorical story based on the biblical tale of Job. Set in a coastal Russian town, one man, Kolya, tries to keep the land his family has owned for multiple generations from the prying hands of a local mayor. What follows the premise is a series of unfortunate events that plague Kolya’s life, paralleling Job’s life. Zvyagintsev’s tragic tale of man versus government leads us down a rabbit hole of undeniable and devastating irrevocable truths of the formidable and unrelenting “leviathan” that is Russia’s government. Directed with searing imagery of false camaraderie, desolate landscapes, and isolative vignettes of people alienated in their own homes, Leviathan is a cautionary tale reflecting our greatest fears about our agency within the world.

The story for Leviathan is a true story but from a place closer to home than Mother Russia. Andre Zvyagintsev bases his inspiration on the rebellious actions of a man named Marvin Heemeyer, an American mechanic from Colorado who refused to pay fines from his local government. Unlike the protagonist of Leviathan, he decided to take active revenge by bulldozing and destroying public property, including his mayor's home and town hall, before killing himself. Zvyagintsev adapted this story to contemporary Russian society and reversed the power dynamics to reflect the vulnerable, powerless individual against the predatory state. 

Leviathan does a terribly good job showcasing how one man’s actions to defy his superiors lead him down a dark path without a chance at redemption. Zvyagintsev, himself, is a firm believer that revolution or having a political say is rather pointless and will not change anything in his favor. Only those with political influence and money ever get a platform to be heard and facilitate change. The film’s outcome aligns with his beliefs, which are not forced and unrealistic but painfully representational of the uncertainty of stability, the uncertainty of god’s will, and the uncertainty of whether the choices we make in our lives are ones out of stubbornness or righteousness. 

It will be an understatement if one does not mention the religious undertones Zvyagintsev litters throughout the film. The plot revolves around everyone trying to escape their deteriorating reality, their inescapable fate. Kolya, through appealing the court, his wife through an affair, his son by literally running away, and almost every side character by constantly drinking their miseries away without restraint. Yet all their attempts to escape their fate are for naught—misfortune triumphs against their folly attempts at every turn. At first glance, the film’s plot seems immoral, cruel, and pointless to view unless we look at Job's story, the allegory mentioned in the movie by a conservative-looking priest. Job’s story conveys a tale of a wealthy man losing everything he holds sacred, his family, his flock, and even his health. Everyone around him assumes he must have done something sinful to achieve such misfortune, even he doubts his faith in God for a second. Yet, in reality, God reveals to him, as the Priest does in Leviathan to Kolya, that sometimes wickedness prevails without God’s intervention, and sometimes the good suffers. The film’s ending has an even more sinister religious twist that no one could have seen coming. Still, it yields the film’s most satisfying message about the meaninglessness fight against a “Leviathan.”

With such a dire metaphor for fighting the system, it's a wonder that the film achieved government funding from the Ministry of Culture and mild approval from Russian critics. Zyvangenstev’s film is too good to be ignored or censored. The film did receive backlash from the Ministry afterward, implementing a ban of his films due to its portrayal of defaming images of Russian culture. Regardless, its premiere at Cannes, nomination for Oscars, winning the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 72nd Golden Globes, and many other awards given by the Russian Guild of film critics proves that despite the film’s critical look at Russian society, no one could resist the groundbreaking and talented work of Zvyanginstev and his heartbreaking masterpiece Leviathan. 

Unlike his Russian avant-garde predecessors, who garnered attention for documentary realness with shaky handheld camerawork and long takes seen in films, Brother and 4, Zvyagintsev rarely moves his camera once he’s set it down. InLeviathan, there is more devoted attention to the composition and performance of actors. In most scenes, we watch the tension unfold through dialogue as the characters in the film realize a conflicting turn of events, sitting alone in suffocating silence or conversing on how to sabotage one another. Zvyagintsev isn’t shy to show that his characters fall apart on screen with no additional gimmicks other than the actors playing their complex roles with a meticulous understanding of the stakes of their characters’ actions. Without giving too much away, Kolya and his wife try their best to find happiness in what brings them comfort. For Kolya, it's his family’s home, while for his wife, it’s in another partner. However, leaning too far into what makes them comfortable solidifies their doom.

By the end of this review, you may be wondering why you should watch such a depressing film about the inevitability of failure in a flawed society, a corrupt “Leviathan,” as the film suggests. The film is not a funeral for the lack of agency in Russian society but a testament to its existence instead of ignoring the harsh truth. Kolya is duly tested for his faith in the government and God, which by the end of the film, one could argue, might be interchangeable. But this test of faith exposes that there may be no plan at all, no sinister plot trying to upend everyone’s goals and dreams, but just flawed people in a hierarchical, stratified society. While the director believes his vote is worthless and standing up to the government is pointless, he still decided to share this story because he believed in its importance. Zvyagintsev values the truth over political agency, over failed action, over apathetic vices, as conveyed by many of the characters of his film. While the truth may be ugly, it does challenge the viewer, forcing them to be aware of political power's corrupt and thuggish nature, regardless of politicians’ good or bad intentions. Zvyagintsev portrays a sickening tale of the human condition in contemporary times that doesn’t fall short of its message or its beauty.