What starts as a seemingly benign spat over less than an acre of land turns toxic and deadly in Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev's masterfully crafted Leviathan. A nominee for this year's Best Foreign Language Oscar, it focuses an intense gaze on a civil suit and the discordant parties whose lives are either pointlessly enriched or irrevocably destroyed.
Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov) ekes out a modest living. He and his pretty wife, Lilya (Elena Lyadova), and sullen teenage son from a first marriage occupy an unassuming house-cum-body shop in icily picturesque northwest Russia. Though it doesn't sit on a particularly vital piece of property, the town's portly and frequently inebriated mayor, Vadim (Roman Madianov) covets it for a communication center. Because Vadim has the means to grease any palm, Kolya' s refusal to take his offer of around 600,000 rubles (about $9,000 U.S.) ultimately leads to court.
Whatever fight Kolya can muster depends on Dmitri (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), an old sports buddy now working as an attorney in Moscow, who says he has some embarrassing information about Vadim. But when he tells Vadim to "settle or we'll go public," Vadim, accustomed to his role as an officially credentialed bully, basically laughs in his face.
A relatively early ruling in Vadim's favor gets a comic, speed-of-light reading by one of three dispassionate female judges (they feel like a nod to the troika of witches in Macbeth). These women show up two more times in the movie, hearing increasingly catastrophic cases that stem from a volatile Molotov cocktail equal parts Kolya's temper, Lilya's impetuosity, and Dmitri's libido.
When the story moves from the claustrophobic courthouse wrangling to the outdoors, cinematographer Mikhail Krichman captures the harsh and chilly yet beautiful Kola Peninsula. It's not clear whether the whale skeleton and decimated hulls of ships rotting just offshore were already there or put there by a talented art director, but it doesn't matter. They're captivating images and apt metaphors for the family unraveling before our eyes.
Leviathan | Dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev | 140 min., in Russian with English subtitles | Tivoli Theatres and Fine Arts Theatres.
