Avis des critiques

The trials of its protagonist, Nikolai, make Job and Jonah, both referenced therein, seem like amateurs. Bleak and blistering, the film seethes with repressed rage. How the dissident Zvyagintsev manages to have his films submitted by Russia for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar category instead of getting kicked out of the country or thrown out a window remains a mystery.

One of the true surprises of Leviathan is how, for such a dour film, so much humor can be found in it. These people could just as easily be the townsfolk of Bedford Falls or John Ford's Ireland, and the film feels genuinely fond of them, corruption and all.

Zvyagintsev's symbolism borders on abrasive, yet the calculating and flawed patterns of the characters deserve to be overtly mirrored by their surroundings. This relationship gives the film's conflict a massive feel, despite being an incredibly micro narrative.

Director Andrey Zvyagintsev renders this story strange by presenting it as the stuff of biblical allegory, invoking the perspective of an angry God with imposing landscape shots and a tone of preternatural dread. 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.

Leviathan certainly carries metaphysical resonance, sometimes explicitly invoked, sometimes alluded to in cinematography that conveys a stark impression of human isolation and vulnerability in the midst of indifferent nature.

We encounter people and civilization, and are forced to reckon with how the former are barely better than beasts, and the latter is a lie. But it's less a condemnation than a resignation, as illustrated by that pendulum swing back to sea. The degree to which such resignation reflects the film's point of view, and not just of its beleaguered characters, is an unsettled ambiguity at the heart of Andrei Zvyagintsev's extraordinarily accomplished movie.

The film's ambitions are so grand and multi-dimensional, and mostly accomplished, that Zvyagintsev's audacity can only be applauded. His is a career that now must be counted one of the most significant in contemporary cinema.

Where Elena dissected Russia's particularly extreme economic chasm between the rich and poor, implicitly sounding a warning over the anger and hostility that must ensue, Leviathan is a remarkably direct broadside against the collusion of the Russian Orthodox Church and a government corrupt on pretty much every conceivable level.

It's indicative of Mr. Zvyagintsev's storytelling that when bread that this priest gives away ends up in a muddy pen — where pigs soon devour these religiously suggestive loaves — the director holds the shot of the guzzling porkers in what can only be described as the needless force-feeding of the viewer. Such bluntness can be maddening, even as Mr. Zvyagintsev's feeling for beauty (every pig ear looks lighted with care) grips you.

Zvyagintsev is an aesthete and a Big Thinker, sure, but he's also a great storyteller, and I found myself caring a great deal about what happened to the characters in Leviathan — what happened with Dmitri's blackmail plot against Vadim and Kolya's attempts to keep his property. It's not that the film doesn't answer these questions — it does — but as the spiritual subtext took over, I couldn't help but feel that something essential had been lost.

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. (See also: Alexander Sokurov, Nikita Mikhalkov, Pavel Lungin. Is there a modern-day Chekhov in the country somewhere?) Leviathan is another downer, but it's considerably looser and livelier than its predecessors, verging at times on black comedy.

Director Andrey Zvyagintsev's film combines allegory, brutal melodrama, black humor and strikingly beautiful compositions, each frame dense with meaning. "Leviathan" stays absolutely gripping, right up to the O. Henry twist that slams the film shut.