SummaryKolia lives in a small town near the Barents Sea in North Russia. He has his own auto-repair shop. His shop stands right next to the house where he lives with his young wife Lilya and his son from a previous marriage. Vadim Shelevyat, the Mayor of the town, wants to take away his business, his house and his land. First he tries buying of...
SummaryKolia lives in a small town near the Barents Sea in North Russia. He has his own auto-repair shop. His shop stands right next to the house where he lives with his young wife Lilya and his son from a previous marriage. Vadim Shelevyat, the Mayor of the town, wants to take away his business, his house and his land. First he tries buying of...
If Leviathan takes the Academy Award on the 22nd — and it’s considered the front-runner by some — it’ll be a win for great filmmaking and a loss for the Putin government.
Um ótimo drama familiar e também uma bela discussão sobre o papel do Estado. Engana-se quem pensa que "Leviatã" é um filme contra o Estado Russo, é na verdade, um filme contra o Estado em sua forma mais pura: o Estado de repressão; está é a função do Estado, e ele funciona assim em todos os lugares do mundo.
Magnificent film shows everything that is wrong with Russia (and most of Eastern Europe). There hasn't been an American film in the last five years that is half as good as this.
Leviathan is acted and directed with unflinching ambition, moving with deliberative slowness and periodically accelerating at moments of high drama and suspense. It isn't afraid of massive symbolic moments and operatic gestures.
Vladimir Putin’s Russia – brutal, carnivorous, delusional, but monstrously well-evolved for crushing both spirits and lives large and small – is taken to task in this excoriating portrait of the state’s omnivorous hunger for control in a far-flung northern fishing community on the Barents Sea.
Ultimately Leviathan may divide viewers between those who find its possible meanings too numerous and inchoate and others who welcome the challenges of helping create its meaning.
The director, Andrey Zvyagintsev, has a heavenly eye but a leaden hand, and his movie is as heavy as it is transporting, filled with stirring shots of the natural world and deep dives into a human realm flooded with tears and vodka.
The politics are rarely overt. “Pussy Riot” stories pop up on TV, and the Orthodox Church’s role in the hierarchy (cozying up to power, serving as a calming “opiate” to the masses) is mocked. Zvyagintsev is a bit too willing, in this overlong film, to let the landscape, the remote setting and the insular world of crumbling apartment blocks, sagging houses, collapsing churches grey skies shape the film’s message.
A nicely presented portrait of the helplessness of the common man put to terms with widespread corruption. I'm not familiar with the main metaphor here (the one about Job), but I can say it's hardly a new concept - the good thing is they've made a sort of realistic thing out of it, without some cheesy happy ending that could easily have killed the entire vibe of the film.
I agree with LowbrowCinema for the most part. The movie has its merits, but it's just too darned bloated. The insights you gain from the film are not worth sitting through the slog. There have been FAR better movies based on the situation in Russia that have been released in recent years. I'm a little stunned that this is the 2nd best limited release movie of 2014. Ida, Whiplash, and Force Majeure are FAR more entertaining - and isn't that the point?
This vodka doused Russian import's three acts can only be described as neat, on the rocks and muddled in a town filled with bad hangovers and future AA members. A cold war breaks out when a way too fair minded car mechanic's land is threatened by a corrupt mayor under the policy of eminent domain- the power for the state to seize property for public use- quite common in the USA. I'll drink to that. But Leviathan drowns in contrived plot twists, cloudy judgement and drunken banter. Far from 2014's best more a public service message for MADD.