‘Leviathan‘ directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev is a movie about faith. Russian literature and cinema are populated by heroes who are confronted with power and faith, the two spiritual components (but also historic institutions) whose combination and close relationship has always dominated the lives of Russians both nationally and personally. The last century has challenged this historic symbiosis. For seven decades after 1917, the communist regime destroyed churches and monasteries and tried to establish atheist Marxism-Leninism as a state doctrine instead of the Orthodox Christianity. The fall of the Soviet regime led to the resurrection of the religious institutions, the rebuilding of churches and the building of many new ones. Does it also represent a return to faith? This question is acute in Russia and all over Eastern Europe. Corruption is the other main theme of the film. There is corruption at the level of the institutions (including the church), but especially there is corruption in the souls of the people.
The landscape in which the action is taking place is that of an ecological disaster, maybe typical and symptomatic of Russia, although such areas of post-apocalyptic appearance exist elsewhere in the world. A retreating sea, wrecks of boats and ships, huge skeletons of prehistoric animals brought to light by the withdrawal of water. A world is obviously decomposing, but the place does not stay empty, there are signs of modernity, although modernity does not necessarily mean progress. The ‘new world’ that takes hold of these places seems dominated by corrupt authorities. The film’s hero, Kolya (played by Aleksey Serebryakov ) is a fisherman. He is not exactly poor, he owns a house at the bend of a river, a boat, a car, has friends, a teenage son, and is also at his second marriage to Lilya (Elena Lyadova). All his life is destroyed in a short time after the local mayor decides to take possession of the land where his home is located and puts in move the justice and police system for this purpose. Kolya will not only be defeated in an uneven struggle with a system that does not hesitate to resort to any method to destroy him, but he realizes that he remained without any moral or spiritual support. Fallen in alcoholism, with his life and family destroyed, he asks why. The answer has nowhere to come from.
Acting is excellent, Russian actors rarely deceive. Aleksey Serebryakov creates a complex and credible character. I was a little disappointed with Lilya’s character, the wife of the hero, missing maybe some text or extra scenes explaining the motivation of her infidelity (an old love story? attraction to Moscow?). I liked the cinematography, spectacular and full of symbolism. I do not know how much courage is needed to make such a movie in Russia today. Director and co-screenwriter Andrey Zvyagintsev is attacking front-level corruption at the local level, and the desolate image of the scene where the action takes place is not flattering. His political criticism however stops at the periphery. The critical approach also targets the institutions of the church, and the parallel with ‘Beyond the Hills‘, the film by the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, was for me immediate. But there is also some hope. The only positive character is a priest from the ranks, whom we see helping his poor parishioners, a man who tries to make sense, console and provide an explanation to the film’s hero about what is happening to him. For Kolya the answer comes too late, but perhaps for others there is hope in returning to the human foundations of faith. It’s maybe the only positive message in this remarkable, but not very optimistic movie.