Andrei Zvyagintsev entered filmmaking relatively late in life, and to
date has produced only four feature films. Yet he is arguably the most
prominent Russian filmmaker working today, and his new film “Leviathan,”
opening in limited release on Christmas Day before going wide next year, has recently
advanced into the foreign-language Oscars short-list, following a triumphant
march along the festival circuit.
With his first two features, allusively titled “The Return” (2003) and “The
Banishment” (2007), Zvyagintsev earned a reputation for crafting chamber family
dramas with a distinct flavor of Old Testament parables. “Leviathan,” then, is
at once a return to form and an advance into wholly new territory. Its central
conflict is, ostensibly, one of the individual against a deeply corrupt,
drunken and murderous state power with methods that bear more than a passing
resemblance to those practiced by the current Russian government. Plus—perhaps
somewhat unexpectedly for a modern-day update on the Book of Job—it nearly
becomes a murder mystery.
Given the resounding success of Zvyagintsev’s daring amalgamation of
current events and Biblical parable, I wanted to look closely at the way the
film’s constituent parts function together, and also to examine briefly its immediate
socio-political context, which may not be readily accessible to audiences
outside of Russia.
It so happened that a few weeks ago I co-moderated a post-screening
discussion of “Leviathan” in a
theater in suburban New Jersey. A very solid (and solidly American) audience
was very much interested in finding out whether “he did it or not.” (Just who
did or didn’t do what I will not say for fear of a spoiler.)
I expect that Russian audiences—if and when they get to see the
film—will not be of two minds on the question of the accused’s innocence. As
Andrei Zvyagintsev reminded me when we met in New York during his recent U.S.
press tour, “some thirty percent of Russia’s prisoners are entrepreneurs of
various kinds, who got “fixed”—either by their competitors or by the
government. They simply disappear. There is no recourse for these people. The
most prominent example, of course, was Khodorkovsky.”
He might have also mentioned Alexei Navalnyi, an inveterate Putin
scourge and anti-corruption activist, who is currently facing a ten-year sentence
on allegations that his company overcharged a client (something even the client
denies), or the two girls from the punk-band Pussy Riot, who spent two years in
a prison camp for “hooliganism.”
As it happens, Pussy Riot do make a split-second appearance in the film
by way of spray-painted graffiti on a partly-obscured TV newsreel. And they
receive an even more oblique mention towards the end, in a sermon delivered to
a church full of unrepentant wheelers and dealers, whose message is: we are the
church, ours is the truth, our prayers get answered, not those of blasphemers
capering about the altar. The last bit is a reference to Pussy Riot’s “punk
prayer” performance (“Mother of God, drive Putin away!”), which ultimately
landed them behind bars. While Russian audiences are far better equipped to
pick up on such subtleties than their New Jersey counterparts, I suspect they
will be equally hard-pressed to say what the film’s many allusions, elisions
and suggestive symbolism ultimately amount to.
What does it mean that portraits of communist leaders are used for
target practice? That crooked officials plot their vengeance under the watchful
eye of Putin’s still “untargeted” portrait? That an old, beautifully frescoed
church is in ruins, while a new, immaculately white church welcomes the
blackest of sinners (whose black luxury cars fill its parking lot)? That Philip
Glass’s Akhnaten overture opens and closes the film? And what, in the end, is
the film’s titular beast? For “Leviathan” turns out to be—perhaps of necessity—a
highly convoluted, slippery creature, only partly glimpsed from the shore, and
its somewhat paradoxical circumstances only add to the general uncertainty.
Whereas “The Return” and “The Banishment” were set firmly in
no-place and no-time, far from the affairs of the day, Zvyagintsev’s “Leviathan” appears to be an unsparing
indictment of the lawlessness and corruption of Putin’s authoritarian regime…
Or perhaps of a deeply corrupt regional administration that is so far removed
from the center of power that the aforementioned portrait of the dear leader appears
to be about fifteen years old… Or perhaps of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose
chillingly menacing representative seems to be pulling the strings of a puppet
hydra, whose smug, writhing heads are the town’s mayor, judge, prosecutor and
police chief… Or all of the above. However it may be, the film paradoxically
received some $2.5 million or about 45% of its budget in government funds.
Following the film’s premiere at Cannes, the Russian culture minister
said that it was not to his liking (no idle words in official Russia);
moreover, he let it be known that films portraying Russia as a “shithole” [sic]
would no longer receive state funding. Despite
such ominous pronouncements, “Leviathan”
was subsequently chosen as Russia’s official entry in this year’s Academy
Awards competition. In today’s increasingly witch-hunting Russia, the
nomination of a film that can easily earn its director the label of a Russophobe
(common and most damning), traitor to the motherland (perennial favorite) or,
at the very least, a CIA shill, might seem like an act of remarkable courage
and defiance—had the film actually been shown there.
More likely, it is an equally remarkable instance of pragmatism and
clear-sightedness from a crony committee that has managed to get but a single
film into the Oscars short-list in the fifteen years of Putin’s rule, and last
year nominated the monstrously kitsch WWII epic “Stalingrad”—in IMAX 3D.
In welcome contrast, “Leviathan”
is somehow taut and fragmentary at once, admirably acted, unabashedly stylish,
and very aware of the tropes and tastes of international arthouse cinema. It is
entirely telling that Nikolai’s house at the center of the conflict bears no
trace of the traditional izba, but is a smart seaside cottage with large
windows running the length of an entire wall. At the same time, the film has
its deep and sprawling roots in the Book of Job, the early 19th
century German novella “Michael
Kohlhaas,” Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan
or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth
Ecclesiasticall and Civil” and a somewhat more recent American
news item: the “Killdozer rampage.”
Since carrying off the prize for Best Screenplay at Cannes the film has
amassed a very impressive cache of festival awards, nominations, distribution
deals and critical praise. One member of Russia’s nominating committee has
opined that it was one of the very few Russian films made in 2014 that could be
“accessible to an American audience,” while its relentlessly bleak depiction of
Russian society would be an advantage, given the state of U.S.-Russia
relations. In short, “Leviathan”
has a very real chance at the Oscars—if only as a perfect opportunity for
“Yankee-go-home” to thumb their collective nose at Russia.
For all its anti-Russian, anti-Putin or anti-clerical rhetoric, “Leviathan”’s international
accomplishments are meticulously documented in official Russian press. There is
no doubt that ordinary Russians are genuinely proud of their compatriot’s
success and would like to see him honored with America’s top film award. At the
same time, no one seems to be in any particular hurry to see the film. “Leviathan” has not received a
domestic release, and its fate remains somewhat ambiguous.
Originally scheduled for a November release, the film ran afoul of a
new law prohibiting the use of obscenities in public media. Taboo language has
a rich and vivid history in Russia and remains an indelible fiber in the fabric
of Russian life [vide supra].
Its banishment from the speculum of this life is—according to the filmmaker—a
“senseless, thoughtless, foolish measure.” Zvyagintsev’s characters, who spend
most of their time in a state of great nervous tension or consuming frightful
quantities of vodka (still ok) for its relief, take natural and frequent
recourse in common vulgarities. Whitewashing their speech would be about as
natural as having them speak Mandarin.
Zvyagintsev initially bristled at the idea, but was eventually forced
to capitulate. “If I want people to see the film in theaters I must abide by
Russian law. But that’s hardly the greatest of the evils that might have
befallen the film.” Whether greater evils will spare “Leviathan” in its native land remains to be seen. As of this
writing, the film has been completely re-dubbed for a rescheduled February
release. Everywhere else, audiences will get to see and hear the film in its
original form—even if in most cases it will be filtered through subtitles.
Asked whether he thought the decision to send “Leviathan” to the Oscars and suppress it at home might be a
brilliant feat of perverse propaganda, Zvyagintsev assured me that “there is no
mechanism in place to release or suppress the film. The only contract I signed
was with my producer, and no institution can interfere with the film’s
progress. They would have to come up with some really unheard-of law to keep
the film from being shown outside Russia.” Indeed, the late release may be a
clever strategy engineered by the film’s seasoned and savvy producer Aleksandr
Rodnyansky (also of “Stalingrad”):
the greater the film’s profile abroad, the harder it will be to suppress it at
home.
Both Zvyagintsev and Rodnyansky have taken every opportunity to explain
to international audiences and media outlets that “Leviathan” was directly inspired by the “Killdozer rampage” of
one Marvin Heemeyer of Colorado. It seems Zvyagintsev heard of Heemeyer while
in the U.S., working on a short film for the omnibus “New York, I Love You” (his segment was ultimately excluded), and
was bowled over by the story of one man’s violent revolt against an entire
town. Rodnyansky is, moreover, confident that “Koreans, Belgians, Americans or
Italians will have no trouble relating to the Russian film because Leviathan speaks of man’s lot and
fate.”
At first I was skeptical of all such pronouncements. In the Soviet
Union of my childhood, fiery invectives against injustice and oppression… in
the Bourgeois West were the only way to hint at these matters at home. But
having read and spoken with Zvyagintsev, and considered his previous films, I
am much more inclined to take seriously the filmmaker’s claim that “Leviathan” is a “universal” or
“eternal story,” and that “its two feet are planted firmly in the realm of art.
The characters speak Russian only because I happen to be Russian. This is why
we transposed the story from Colorado to Russia, but the conflict, the struggle
of a simple man against fate, god or state—here personified by the mayor—this
could have happened anywhere.”
Actually, I am willing to concede only one foot, not two. I think that
Zvyagintsev’s natural instinct is to craft stories with the suggestive
allusiveness and universal concerns of parables and allegories—stories set in
the Land of Uz. His second instinct, perhaps, is that of a seasoned dramatist.
Questioned about the unrelenting pessimism of “Leviathan” (which I foolishly mistook for an assessment of
Russia’s prospects under Putin), Zvyagintsev explained, “When you want to
explore a subject you must place it under a magnifying glass and tighten the
screw until it breaks, to see how much pressure your subject can withstand. I
want to see what my hero is made of, test his mettle.”
He is in his natural element, then, among the age-old and still
unrelieved travails and heartrending contradictions of human existence—even
more specifically, the existence of the family unit. It is the family, perhaps
more than the individual hero, that is put to the screw in “Leviathan” to see how much suffering
it can bear. It is no accident that the family unit is deliberately weakened
from the outset—it is a composite, artificial family, whose cracks become
evident in the very first scenes.
The same may be said of all four of Zvyagintsev’s films, including his
previous effort “Elena.” It was
Zvyagintsev’s first collaboration with Rodnyansky, and while its setting is far
more defined geographically, and its concerns seemingly far more topical and
distinctly Russian, the social and political realities of contemporary Russia
are kept very skillfully in the background. Indeed, to this viewer they
appeared almost purely incidental.
“Leviathan” is a far more earnest effort to transplant a universal tale onto
Russian soil—to make a topical film that can be acutely relevant in the
socio-political circumstances of today’s Russia. And while the film
unquestionably deserves its many accolades, I think it has not been entirely
successful in marrying the parable of everyman’s (or every-family’s) struggle
against fate, god or state to the (alas, much too drawn-out) “newsreel” of
corruption and lawlessness that reign over many aspects of life in Putin’s
Russia.
The great difficulty here is finding the elusive and highly precarious
balance between the veiled, suggestive language demanded by the genre of
parable and the explicit, factual language of the everyday. Indeed, such a
balance may be no more than a phantom. In any case, with “Leviathan,” Zvyagintsev
had certainly set himself a daunting and extremely delicate task. Too many
recognizable details, too explicit a target for righteous indignation, too
solvable a riddle, and the eternal story recedes into the background. This is
why Pussy Riot are merely a flash on the screen and a veiled reference in a
soporific sermon; why the real villain is never clearly identified; why the
town where the action is set—as we learn from the rattle of the court’s
decision—is a most non-committal Pribrezhnyi or Seaside.
And why the final sequence of the film may leave many—Russian or
otherwise—puzzled. When I wondered why
so many key facts are deliberately suppressed, while an awfully cruel (and
perhaps ultimately irrelevant) truth is revealed at the very end, Zvyagintsev
confided that when he and his writing partner came up with the finale “it was
like a bolt of lightning—we felt that we had made an incredible discovery, that
with this finale we were approaching some kind of terrifying truth.”
I can believe that some in the audience will indeed experience such a shock,
but only if they do not spend the entire film looking for veiled allusions to
contemporary events—or, indeed, look for clues to the murder. In the world of
the parable, in the Land of Uz, the ending will have its proper effect.
Meanwhile, “Leviathan” remains
something of a composite beast. It may be an awesome sight at sea, but it
stands a bit precariously on land.
