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Leviathan

Much has been bandied about regarding the relationship between Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev's celebrated film Leviathan—an Academy Award nominee and winner of a Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe and Best Screenplay award at Cannes—and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Moscow-based film critic Anton Dolin calls Leviathan "an open challenge to Putin's rule," and Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker has stated, "There's no way it's not a political film, while Zvyagintsev understandably demurs, "Everyone will see in Leviathan something different, something that is familiar to them. But I strongly disagree when Leviathan is called just a social commentary—be it on corruption or the current state of affairs—in any given country. It's a story of human tragedy."

For his part, Zvyagintsev and co-screenwriter Oleg Negin have pointed out that the film's story was inspired by the true tale of nervous-brokedown Colorado mechanic Marvin John Heemeyer and Heinrich von Kleist's 1810 novella Michael Kohlhaas. And critics have (partly backed by the film's title) consistently seen in Leviathan both reference to Thomas Hobbes' characterization of the state and Biblical allusions: to the sea creature and the protagonist of the Book of Job (explicitly and implicitly name-checked in the film), and the Book of Kings' story of Naboth's Vineyard. That all of this and more lives in Leviathan demonstrates Zvyagintsev's deceptively simple but richly meaningful construction. Zvyagintsev literally and allegorically depicts modern Russia's runaway corruption but also captures universal fears about the shaky ground on which we construct our lives.

In the northern coastal town of Teriberka, bordering the White Sea, auto mechanic Kolya (Alexey Serebryakov) suffers the torments of the damned. The home he shares with second wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova) and teenage son Roma (Sergey Pokhodaev) stands in the way of the building plans of two corrupt and corpulent men: Mayor Shelevyat (Roman Madyanov) and the Russian Orthodox priest (Valeriy Grishko) who serves, in back-room dealings, as his not-so-silent partner. The struggle over the property shares time with other causes for despair (infidelity, loss of loved ones), with no one emerging unscathed from either Zvyagintsev the tragedian or Zvyagintsev the savage social satirist. Potent naturalistic acting, gorgeous cinematography and a Philip Glass score seal the deal of this haunting look at how power corrupts within cities and within personal and business relationships.

Months after its release, Leviathan continues to stir up controversy and trouble for its makers. Russian Minister of Culture Vladmiir Medinsky has been a vocal critic of the film, while parliamentarian Vitaly Milonov, calling the film "unpatriotic," has called for repayment of a government subsidy that contributed to the film's budget. Activists in Samara region are demanding that their regional culture minister see to the firing of Grishko from his job at the head of Samara's academic drama theater. The Russian release of the film was subjected to the censors' scissors due to its salty language. And Zvyagintsev, who has always played Cheshire Cat about the film's politics, recently complained of difficulty finding funding for his next film, citing a hostile, um, economic climate and the uncommercial subject matter of his films.

Of course, such trials are the stuff of Leviathan, within and without. "Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope?" one character asks of the titular sea creature. "Nothing on earth is his equal." Despite glimmers of life and light, Zvyagintsev's film resolves into the dark and bleak, but from the outside looking into the film, Leviathan shines a cinematic light of artistic transcendence and triumph. Perhaps there is no understanding to be had of life's mysteries and cruelties, but great art—that looks unflinchingly at moral failures and the impotent rage they engender—is a good start.