November 21, 2014  

Leviathan – a Review

Leviathan is an immensely powerful film about corruption. It starts slowly and builds up to a crescendo assault on the hypocrisy of the established Orthodox church and the Russian state in unison. The sweep of the film is as vast as the drear Arctic landscape and its targets are legion, ranging from the casual drunken violence of the men and the pusillanimous submissiveness of the women, from the dereliction imposed on the landscape by the inheritance of the communist era to the mindless exploitation of kleptocratic capitalism. It hardly needed the giant skeleton of a long dead whale gracing the shore to point out the symbolism.

The country is littered with wrecked fishing boats, a vandalised church, unsurfaced roads and ruined lives. The consumption of Vodka is on an epic scale; the casual gun culture is ironically reminiscent of one’s worst fears about the Americas, both Latin and USA. What hope is there for the future, for the adolescent left as the rootless survivor of this tragedy?

A woman in the audience said, as we left, that she was left speechless by this Andrey Zvyagintsev film. She was the only one of us who was able to say anything at all. If this was a statement of modern Russia then the one positive was that somehow the authorities allowed it to be shown in Cannes where unsurprisingly it won an award. But apart from that the film showed with brutal candour the total corruption of a society, which appears to have lost all sense of purpose, sense of self, self-belief.

Target practice for the shooters were Brezhnev, Gorbachev and other dinosaurs from the past but not Yeltsin, “too insubstantial to bother with”, nor the current leader, “history has not yet had time to assess”. But we didn’t get round to that action – stalled as we were by seduction and violent brawling.

Was there anything encouraging about the film? Well, yes, through all the beautifully acted stages of drunkenness nevertheless the essential humanity of the lead figures came through. The women may have been down-trodden victims of violence but they were the ones who kept society running, whether as the mind-numbing officers of the state or doing the worst jobs, and the men had a certain tragic nobility.

There is so much to say about this film. The descent from the noble statue of Lenin to the tawdry, faded picture of Putin watching over the shoddy, shabby nature of the formica topped tables in the Mayor’s office and the desperate loneliness of the quality (?) restaurant alone were subjects for a book. But don’t take my word for it. If you have any interest in great films, in Russia, in tragedy, then break a leg to go and see this film.

About Tony Belton

Labour Councillor for Latchmere Ward 1972-2022, now Battersea Park Ward, London Borough of Wandsworth Ever hopeful Spurs supporter; Lane visit to the Lane, 1948 Olympics. Why don't they simply call the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, The Lane? Once understood IT but no longer

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