Our take
With laws, education, and modern day systems, it seems like the modern man has some means for recourse, at least more than the average person centuries ago. However, despite this, injustices still remain. Leviathan depicts Kolya, a modern day Job, set out to keep his land from the clutches of a corrupt mayor. It’s bleak and depressing, somewhat neorealistic as Kolya goes through various hardships due to political greed, but there’s some wry sense of humor, one that bitterly points out how much hasn’t changed since biblical times. While it’s quite long, Leviathan is likely to move most viewers to tears, and maybe to shots of vodka, due to its depiction of the everyday man.
What it won
Other
1 nom
The story
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.
Elsewhere
"Many conversations start and end around a kitchen table. Why, then, should we be left with such an impression of grandeur, limitless suffering, and wrath?"
— Anthony Lane
After the mayor of Pribrezhny seizes the land of his ancestral home, Russian fisherman Kolya is forced to fight back, recruiting his old lawyer friend Dmitri for help.
The ending. It’s realistic, but it’s left me furious and depressed and helpless.
Don’t watch this when depressed.
The details
Who picked it
Isabella Endrinal is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. She's now free from the corporate night shift. Previous articles have been published in outlets such as NANG Magazine. She's currently catching up on some classic films… if she isn't coping with the fact that the Haikyu anime will end soon.
"One of the outstanding films of 2014, Leviathan lives up to its title: it's a behemoth of intelligent contemporary cinema."
— Jonathan Romney