Leviathan
Masters
Leviathan is a well acted, beautifully shot film that highlights the best of mother nature and the worst of human nature.
Kolya (Alexey Serebryakov), a proud patriarch with a gorgeous Russian seaside property, is rendered helpless when a corrupt city official decides he would like the land for himself. Kolya enlists the help of his friend Dmitri (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), a lawyer from Moscow, who attempts to blackmail the mayor,.
Andrey Zvyaginstev won best screenplay at Cannes for this bleak drama that feels like House of Sand and Fog meets Revanche . Despite it being a small scale story taking place in a rural area, Zvyaginstev ties together larger themes of Russian politics, religion, corruption, and family.
Leviathan begins like a Godfrey Reggio film, highlighting the setting’s geography while music by Phillip Glass helps set the tone. What follows is a two and a half hour slow burn where the pace never really picks up, but kind of stays consistent. The most dramatic events take place off-screen, leaving the viewer is left to piece together what exactly happened.
Though uniquely Russian in many ways, this story translates well to a Canadian landscape (not just because of the drunk, corrupt mayor), where a large portion of the country is removed from urbanization and people assume that ugly things don’t happen in beautiful places. (Noah Taylor)
Screens
Wednesday, September 10 th , 6:00pm, Visa Screening Room (Elgin)
Thursday, September 11 th , 4:45pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 2
Thanks to SPiN TORONTO for sponsoring our TIFF 2014 coverage.
