The Reel Critic: Leviathan

In a general way, I think that the saddest stories are the ones that depict injustice against decent people. Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan does more than this, processing an archetypal Russian film protagonist named Kolya through an almost-comically horrible downfall at the hands of political evil. Kolya has built a home with his hands, perched on pretty land overlooking the sea which the town’s mayor wants to seize for a business venture; Kolya suspects the mayor wants to build his own palace. With help from a lawyer named Dmitri, Kolya tries to rebel. But his story has an unavoidable end: it is contained within a system which overwhelms all levels of morality, and even if people are unconscious to their role in the system, they can’t escape it. Dmitri, in an early line, perhaps encapsulates the film, saying, “Everything is everyone’s fault.”

Kolya has a temper and smokes and drinks, but not more than everyone else, and he is generally well-liked amongst those in the small town. There are tensions between his wife and teenage son from a previous marriage, but initially, he is able to manage these tensions. We sense the beginning of something much worse as Dmitri and Kolya attend the court hearing on Kolya’s land. A judge pronounces the verdict – supported by “indisputable facts,” legal jargon named with long case numbers and statues – in a monotone so fast that the ruling against Kolya is almost inaudible.

These proceedings are very formal and impersonal, which does not satisfy the mayor, who staggers drunk to Kolya’s house to remind Kolya that he “never had rights” to begin with. Dmitri files a claim against the mayor for trespassing, worded in the court system’s legal jargon. He takes it to the police station with Kolya, who impatiently asks why it’s taking so long for the officer to process his claim. The officers immediately arrest Kolya, who in theory might have rights, but certainly not the right to question authority with impatience.

Different characters ask Dmitri if he believes in God, to which he always supplies the same response: “I’m a lawyer. I believe in facts.” If it’s true that all of us must believe in something, then Dmitri might want to dismiss facts altogether, as facts seem useless against a system that creates its own truth. Alternatively, the mayor does believe in God, but mostly because God believes in him. The local priest assures him that yes, God does want you to take Kolya’s land.

Leviathan’s drama plays out on a closely personal scale, focused on Kolya’s legal battle and quickly dissolving family, and only ever filmed in Kolya’s small north-Russian town. Then again, we look later in the film to find Kolya and his friends taking target practice at portraits of Lenin and Gorbachev. Things could be more subtle, but at least they have a sense of humor. Someone asks about Yeltsin’s absence from the shooting-party, but is told that Yeltsin is “too small time,” and also that the current leaders should “ripen on the wall” a bit before use. We see Putin’s face only one time in the film, his portrait hanging on the wall of the mayor’s office: he ripens on the wall, but is not exactly the target, either. Everything about the system is evil, and for the most part, people, maybe all people in the film, are just pawns eaten by its power.

Our sympathies are straightforward in Leviathan – the good people have relationships, families, ambitions and the bad people don’t have redeeming qualities, totally consumed by greed and systems of bureaucratic evil. It is true that the bad people, mostly the mayor, are more stand-ins for corruption than real characters. Usually we’re meant to chastise black-and-white moralities of this nature, asking instead for more honest shades of grey, but Leviathan’s exact narrative goal is to paint a world in moral black and white. The church says that that there is only God’s Truth, which somehow corresponds to the truth of the politicians, and together the two are so bloated with their own truth that ambiguity becomes impossible. To call Leviathan resolute in its ideas seems like meager praise – it runs for two and a half hours, but is structured perfectly, with no wasted shots or time. Even if Leviathan’s conclusion becomes unavoidable, watching evil work is somehow always surprising.