Leviathan (2014)
Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev
In a Russian coastal town, Kolya is forced to fight the corrupt mayor when he is told that his house will be demolished. He recruits a lawyer friend to help, but the man's arrival brings further misfortune for Kolya and his family.
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What critics say influenced Leviathan
Although the most accessible of the director's four features, the drama sometimes waivers between pretension and profundity -- at best recalling the Russian art cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky ("Ivan's Childhood") and Aleksandr Sokurov ("Mother and Son").
In the pantheon of great recent Russian works, Nikita Mikhalkov’s “Burnt by the Sun” makes for a good companion piece in the sense of violent undercurrents, but in texture and exploration of the human condition, the more ethereal and subtly complex “The Sacrifice” by the late, great Andrei Tarkovsky is a more apt specter of the beast.
In the pantheon of great recent Russian works, Burnt by the Sun makes for a good companion piece in its staid, violent undercurrents, but in texture and exploration of the human condition, the more ethereal and subtly complex The Sacrifice by the late, great Andrei Tarkovsky is a more apt specter of the beast.
Although the most accessible of the director's four features, the drama sometimes waivers between pretension and profundity -- at best recalling the Russian art cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky ("Ivan's Childhood") and Aleksandr Sokurov ("Mother and Son").
In the pantheon of great recent Russian works, Nikita Mikhalkov’s “Burnt by the Sun” makes for a good companion piece in the sense of violent undercurrents, but in texture and exploration of the human condition, the more ethereal and subtly complex “The Sacrifice” by the late, great Andrei Tarkovsky is a more apt specter of the beast.
In the pantheon of great recent Russian works, Burnt by the Sun makes for a good companion piece in its staid, violent undercurrents, but in texture and exploration of the human condition, the more ethereal and subtly complex The Sacrifice by the late, great Andrei Tarkovsky is a more apt specter of the beast.
His scathing depiction of all-consuming bureaucracy is reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, except this isn’t a work of satirical science-fiction fantasy.
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Toward the end, Serebryakov reminded me of Robert De Niro in Raging Bull at the point when he's a bloody pulp in boxer shorts, taking blow after blow just to prove he can.
He becomes the target of the corrupt mayor (Roman Madyanov, brilliantly conjuring up shades of Bob Hoskins in “The Long Good Friday” and current Russian prez Vladimir Putin) in a northwestern Russian province near the Finnish border.
Kolya becomes the target of the corrupt mayor (Roman Madyanov, brilliantly conjuring up shades of Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday and current Russian President Vladimir Putin) in a northwestern Russian province, near the Finnish border.
The film is in some ways a more obvious successor to "Once Upon A Time In Anatolia" than Ceylan's own "Winter Sleep," matching the meditative rhythm and uncompromising artistry with a genuinely compelling story, and scenes as outright entertaining as anything we've seen in the festival.
With the exception of this drawn-out courtroom scene, which he plays for absurdist comedy (a la Romanian satire “Police, Adjective”), and a few extended driving sequences (echoes of Turkish procedural “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”), “Leviathan” typically moves much faster, covering far more ground over the course of its densely packed narrative.
No movie called “Leviathan” and not about a sea alien eating Daniel Stern (or about fish ) should be this nimble.
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His 2003 debut "The Return" won the Golden Lion at Venice, 2007’s "The Banishment" picked up Best Actor at Cannes, and 2011’s "Elena" won the Special Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard.
In Zvyagintsev’s past films, from 2003 Venice Film Festival winner “The Return” to 2011’s Un Certain Regard-selected “Elena,” the helmer meditatively held certain shots to the brink of patience.
As complex as a novel, and apparently loosely based on the Book of Job, Andrey Zvyagintsev's official Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film, Leviathan is not as arty as his previous films The Return (2003) and Elena (2011), but it's still brainy enough to please hardcore cinephiles.
Leviathan is the fourth feature from 50-year-old filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, Elena), a director whose fondness for long takes and spiritual themes has often drawn comparisons to the late Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky.
Yet Leviathan, the latest movie from auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, Elena), won Best Screenplay at Cannes and is Russia’s entry for Best Foreign-Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards.
Written and directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, Elena), the film concerns a man named Kolya who lives in a small coastal town on the Barents Sea, who wants to save his home from an eminent-domain-like seizure by the local mayor.
Director Zvyagintsev (2003’s The Return) paints with a mammoth canvas but chooses to focus on the travails of one fragile family: father Kolya (Serebryakov), his wife Lilya (Liadova), and his rebellious son Roma (Pokhodaev) from a previous marriage.
For Russian writer-director Zvyagintsev, whose 2003 debut The Return deeply impressed, this is feature number four, though only his second to be seen here outside festivals.
Andrey Zvyagintsev, who has intimately dissected the human toll of post-communist boom and bust cycles in “Elena” and “The Return,” connects personal conflict with public corruption like nobody’s business in this seemingly unpromising tale of a property dispute in a small seaside town.
Leviathan is the fourth feature from 50-year-old filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, Elena), a director whose fondness for long takes and spiritual themes has often drawn comparisons to the late Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky.
The story, small in scope, is a concentrated political chamber melodrama that's reminiscent of the plot that drove Zvyagintsev's previous film, Elena .
As in their previous feature, Elena, Zvyagintsev and cowriter Oleg Negin modulate their social critique with sharp, ironic humor; the mayor, in particular, is an inspired satirical creation, at once a spiteful monster and a graceless buffoon.
Yet Leviathan, the latest movie from auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, Elena), won Best Screenplay at Cannes and is Russia’s entry for Best Foreign-Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards.
Written and directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, Elena), the film concerns a man named Kolya who lives in a small coastal town on the Barents Sea, who wants to save his home from an eminent-domain-like seizure by the local mayor.
Leviathan, the pitch-black new film from Elena director Andrey Zvyagintsev, is bookended by montages of startling, almost cosmically withering imagery.
Like Zvyagintsev’s second feature, The Banishment (07), Leviathan wears its religious themes on its sleeve—but in a more direct, down-to-earth manner than that rather portentous, overtly Tarkovskian exercise.
It is so slyly executed that this will probably be even more rewarding on a second viewing, but when first seen, its expansive nature at times, especially in the midway stretch, may risk inviting unflattering comparisons with Zvyagintsev’s unwieldy 157-minute sophomore feature, The Banishment (2007).
His 2003 debut "The Return" won the Golden Lion at Venice, 2007's "The Banishment" picked up Best Actor at Cannes, and 2011's "Elena" won the Special Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard.
In his three previous films ( The Return , The Banishment, Elena ), Zvyagintsev frequently pushed past sober into dour, leaning too heavily on a characteristically Soviet sense of gloom and doom.
His three previous features – “Elena,” “The Banishment” and “The Return” – are all highly accomplished works, but they’re also too oblique, too restrained and too unresolved to satisfy the expectations of mainstream moviegoers.
The narrative, co-written by Oleg Negin who also collaborated with Zvyagintsev on "The Banishment" and "Elena," begins with a simple premise: Auto-repair shop owner Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov) must fight to keep his home and land from being seized by the crooked mayor (Roman Madyanov) of a remote fishing village near the Barents Sea in northern Russia.