ARTS & CULTURE
Monday, February 2, 2014 7
A Trio of Film Reviews, Currently in Theatres
Laughter, Tears—and Bottles of Vodka
kendall grant › staff writer
Leviathan (2014) 4/4
Unflinchingly tense, staggeringly well-made,
thought-provoking, and brimming with emotion,
Leviathan is a Chekhov-style family tragedy; a
subtle, extremely barbed satire exposing criminality in contemporary Russia; a film possessed of both
classic sweep and sharp modern relevance. Filled
with a desolate beauty, it’s a stupendous piece of
work, a tale for vertiginous times, a grave and enormous epic that’s impossible to ignore.
Not to be confused with the acclaimed 2012
whaling documentary, although likewise dealing
with submerged monsters, Leviathan gathers like
cautionary thunder about the dangers of fighting
city hall corruption. Loosely inspired by the Book of
Job and set against the Barents Sea, the grim Russian
narrative recounts Kolya (Aleksei Serebryakov), a
man striving to protect his home from a behemoth:
the belligerent town mayor, Mer (Roman Madyanov),
who swills vodka like water and swaggers like a
despot. Confronted with the imminent threat of
demolition, Kolya recruits a slick Moscow lawyer,
Dmitri (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), to help, but his
arrival brings further misfortune.
Directed by Andrei Zvyagintsev (The Return,
Elena) with cynicism, religious fervour, and an
unflinching ambition, the incendiary and bone-rattling Leviathan is a trenchant and tough-minded
tragedy, a black social comedy, and a thinlyveiled political parable drenched in bitter irony.
Zvyagintsev credits Thomas Hobbes’ 1651 tome of
the same name for inspiring its outlook on governmental control; its rolling scope, astonishing cinematography, and commanding performances make
for a giant of a film, like A Serious Man meets House
of Sand and Fog meets Revanche.
Stunningly
shot and wrenchingly
acted,
especially
by
Madya nov, th is
is searing filmmaking executed
on a grand scale. Mikhail Krichman’s cinematography captures the sublime grandeur of the landscapes. Zvyagintsev combines allegory, brutal
melodrama, black humour, and striking compositions, each frame dense with meaning. Yet amidst
the immaculate craftsmanship, he never loses sight
of the humans, who are allowed to display improvisatory behaviour that deepens the majesty of the
rigorously orchestrated tableaus. Indeed, the performances are knockout, and the script drum-tight, a
Best Screenplay winner at Cannes.
Mammoth and muscular, haunting and heartbreak ing, frustrati ng and pai n f u l ly f u n ny,
Leviathan has a feeling of expansiveness; its power
and its horrors sneak up on you. It’s a dense, multilayered picture, one firmly rooted in a specific
landscape, a dramatic coastal spot dotted with
the carcasses of decrepit fishing boats, as well as
the magnificent skeleton of one long-dead whale.
Absolutely gripping and emotionally devastating, Leviathan is visceral, rebellious fare, a modern
classic weaving together rich characters, thriller
ê Photo credit: variety.com
elements, witty satire, and political bite. It’s indisputably one of the great films of the year.
Taking aim against the corrupt, corrosive regime
of Vladimir Putin, Leviathan presents modern
Russia as a country rotten to its core – corrupt, hypocritical, and godless. As sobering as a week-long
hangover, it’s a symbolic, impossibly sophisticated
portrait of a state that puts bureaucracy before community, about an unforgiving pyramid structure
t hat helplessly
crushes the little
guy, with God,
or at least the
Orthodox Church,
perched on top.
After offering a
number of potentially heroic narratives, Zvyagintsev
takes pleasure in undercutting each of their claims
to supremacy. He is the calm surveyor of a fallen
world, and Leviathan never writhes out of control.
But Zvyagintsev’s pessimism is leavened by both
his compassion and glancing comedy, as well as his
sense of cold beauty of setting and bold, curious
themes, which leave a lasting wonder.
Like so many Russian works of art, this is bleak,
“. . . Leviathan presents
modern Russia as a country
rotten to its core . . .”
bleak stuff. Leviathan is a movie about a feeling, or
more accurately, about a lack of feeling – about what
happens to people in a dominant culture of bullying and abuse, when they have no escape except the
next shotglass, no options except not waking up.
The pitiless way that Zvyagintsev metes out punishments to all is savage, and you might want that fourway vodka by the end. But Leviathan has the heft
and impact of a proper, old-fashioned Russian novel:
it leaves you feeling changed at the end.
The shortness of life compensates for its brutish and nasty tendencies, and only the stillness
of nature can provide a semblance of peace. In the
world of this remorseless, brutal masterpiece, no
wonder the bottle beckons.
Top Five (2014) 2.5/4
Savvy, scathing, and scurrilously funny, Top Five is
a pyrotechnic pinwheel of a personal comedy, reverberating with savagely prowling wit and sabresharp one-liners. It’s a crude, clumsy, culturally
tone-deaf reminder that as often as comedy fails us,
» see film reviews, page 12
t humbs UP
The court challenge to the Beer Store
monopoly.