Andrey Zvyagintsev’s bitter drama about corruption in northern Russia is beautifully acted and unexpectedly funny. The religious symbolism grows heavy, but the people remain worth caring about, even when they are difficult company.
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan is a fierce, unexpectedly funny drama about a working man taking on corrupt local power in northern Russia. We recommend it, with a warning that its religious symbolism eventually presses harder than it needs to. He and co-writer Oleg Negin make that struggle spread through family life and the wider community, where ordinary failings leave people exposed to officials with far greater ones. There is time for those people to be awkward, selfish and ridiculous before we are asked to pity them.
Aleksei Serebryakov gives Nikolay Sergeev an anger that can be tiring to sit with, which is part of the performance’s force. He is convincing as a man whose resistance does not necessarily make him good company, and the film gains from declining to tidy him into a model victim. Elena Lyadova’s Liliya Sergeeva helps keep the family scenes from becoming a lesson delivered on Nikolay’s behalf. Both performances make the domestic unhappiness matter independently of what it tells us about Russia.
Roman Madyanov, playing Vadim Shelevyat, understands how much comedy there can be in a bully who expects to be taken seriously. We laughed at his self-importance, then felt uneasy about having laughed. His blustering remains ridiculous even as we understand how much power he has over the people facing him. His performance supplies some welcome variation in a film that could otherwise become exhausting well before its 141 minutes are up.
Mikhail Krichman photographs the desolate northern coast in wide compositions and gives us time to look. Those long views interrupt the close attention to human spite without making the situation feel any less oppressive. We can enjoy the landscape while remaining uncomfortable about the lives being lived there. Andrey Ponkratov’s production design makes the everyday settings feel inhabited, helping the actors keep this account of corruption recognisably ordinary.
Anna Mass’s editing leaves some narrative gaps and finds room for minor characters, trusting us to keep pace as the film moves beyond Nikolay. Those choices help the community feel larger than a collection of witnesses to one man’s trouble. The music, credited to Philip Glass and Andrey Dergachyov, gives the expansive images a solemn weight. It is effective, though we sometimes wanted less insistence on how gravely we should take what we were watching.
The difficulty comes when the religious comparisons demand more attention than the people. The echoes of the Book of Job are plain enough, and the second half gives them a prominence that makes an already remorseless story feel over-explained. Political dramas can flatten people into examples, and the director mostly avoids that through the unruly performances and sour comedy. Yet the Church, government and judiciary are set so firmly against the individual that the story can feel decided in advance.
Give it an evening when the interruptions can wait. Expect some laughter, too; approaching it as nothing but a solemn lecture would do the actors a disservice. We would avoid scheduling an appointment with local government for the following morning.
