Leviathan is a 2014 film from Russia directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev.
Kolya is a handyman/mechanic who lives with his second wife Lilia in a gray, sad little town on the shores of the Arctic Ocean near Murmansk. Mayor Vadim, the fat, corrupt Mayor of the little town, is pushing an eminent domain claim that will allow him to seize Kolya's house and land, at a grossly low price. The mayor claims that he will build a communication station there but Kolya suspects it's for his own personal benefit. Kolya isn't going to cave so easily, however, and calls in his old army buddy Dmitri, now a Moscow lawyer, to help.
This movie provides examples of:
- The Alcoholic: Every named character who drinks alcohol. The main character seems to end up like this.
- As the Good Book Says...: The bishop quotes from Job 41. See Title Drop below.
- The Bad Guy Wins: The mayor succeeds in seizing Kolya's land and building a church, and Kolya goes to prison to boot.
- Bowdlerized: In Russia itself, all the profanity was censored.
- Corrupt Bureaucrat: The main antagonist is the mayor of a northern Russian town, who is seeking to seize the protagonist's land.
- Corrupt Church: The Orthodox Church is presented in far from the best view in the movie. The bishop, who puts on a mask of Christian goodness, seems to be conspiring with the mayor to seize Kolya's land.
- Downer Ending: Lilia commits suicide. Afterwards, Kolya is arrested and charged with murdering her. This allows the mayor and the bishop he's in cahoots with to proceed with their project, building a cathedral where Kolya's house was.
- Driven to Suicide: It isn't shown, but apparently Lilia flung herself off the cliffs by the ocean.
- Headbutt of Love: Kolya and Dmitri do this during a night of drinking.
- Hypocrite: In spite of being chummy with the Russian Orthodox church and paying lip service to its values, the mayor gets up to some very unchristian behavior. Besides the fact that what he's knowingly violating the law, he also has no problem using other legal mechanisms to ruin Kolya's life. That's to say nothing of how he's persistently driven by greed (his desire for more power), gluttony (the fact that he's living comfortably at the expense of his hardscrabble, working-class citizens), wrath (his anger at Kolya and Dima for objecting to his abuse of power), pride (his belief that he understands God's will and is merely acting on his behalf), and more than anything else, his envy of Kolya's land.
- The Man Behind the Man: The Orthodox Bishop. While throughout the film it seems the mayor is the main antagonist, and the direct cause of much of the characters' suffering, in the end it seems the Bishop was pulling his strings the whole time.
- Motor Mouth: The judge who reads the ruling in Kolya's case. She reads off the judgement in barely-comprehensible legalese, which would hardly be understandable even at normal speed. Doubles as a very black Brick Joke when the same judge reads off his 15-year sentence for murder at the same lightning speed.
- Noodle Incident: The nature of the blackmail Dmitri tries to use on the mayor is never explained.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Everyone who isn't actively screwing Kolya over is passively refusing to help him. When he's chucked in prison, the lady at the prosecutor's office says that no one's there and she isn't authorized to let him out. When Dmitri tries to find a judge, the judge conveniently isn't there either.
- Pet the Dog: After Kolya is arrested, Pasha and Angela take in Roma rather than allowing him to get sent to an orphanage.
- Primal Scene: Roma stumbles upon his parents having a rather rough lovemaking session in the basement. He's driven to rage rather than embarrasment, presumably having something to do with the recent revelation of his mother's infidelity, for which he lashes out at her shortly afterward.
- Reckless Gun Usage: The characters get very drunk on vodka and use Kalashnikovs to shoot portraits of Soviet/Russian leaders as a way of blowing off some steam.
- Ribcage Ridge: The whale skeleton on the beach. While it isn't literally another world, as Murmansk Oblast is in fact on Earth, it serves to help mark the town as someplace different. The whale bones also help reinforce the mood of hopelessness and despair.
- Scenery Gorn: Opens with shots of the bleak and depressing town, with special attention to the rotting hulks of long-derelict ships in the harbor.
- Take That!: While looking at the portraits of Soviet leaders that were brought for target practice, Kolya asks if they brought anything more current, a clear dig at Vladimir Putin.
- The corrupt, evil Mayor Vadim has a prominent portrait of Putin hanging in his office, another obvious implication.
- Title Drop: And also As the Good Book Says.... After Kolya challenges the bishop about where is God, the bishop quotes the first three verses
of Job 41, comparing Kolya to Job (they certainly both suffer, but Kolya doesn't get Job's happy ending.) The allusions to Leviathan seem to be a reference to the corrupt, unjust Russian state. There is also a visual title drop with the shots of the skeleton of a whale, washed up in the harbor. And another visual title drop when Lilia, looking down from the cliff, sees a live whale in the water.Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook
or tie down its tongue with a rope?
Can you put a cord through its nose
or pierce its jaw with a hook?
Will it keep begging you for mercy?
Will it speak to you with gentle words? - Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The town the movie is set in doesn't exist, but shares a name with several towns in Russia.
