Powerful Russian Satire on Corruption in Putinland

I love watching movies because, like reading books, they stretch your imagination by telling a story in numerous different ways and sometimes blow your mind away by giving you a perspective of life that is too real. The Russian movie Leviathan, which has already swept all the Best Foreign Movie Awards so far, is almost a sure win for this category in the upcoming Oscars. It's a powerful satire on the current corrupt Russian government and on religion as well. As always, Russian literature and art excel in the reflection of the darkest side of humanity.

The story took place in a small Russian coastal town in the Barents Sea where whales sometimes appear and an ordinary working-class family was just trying to get by and seek happiness. Fishing was the main occupation of the town and people sought enjoyment by drinking vodka and having a lot of sex. Corruption was the norm of life and every public official including the mayor, his staff, the cops and even the priest were all cut from the same cloth. There were only a few characters in the film but very soon, they seemed like your friends and, as the audience, you became very involved with this unfortunate family.

Leviathan is Hebrew for Sea Monster as depicted in Tanakh and The Book of Job from the Old Testament. The book addressed the theme of God's justice in the face of human suffering, or in other words, asked a very simple question: why do the righteous suffer? In modern Hebrew, Leviathan means "whale," which explains the setting of this Russian coastal town where the sea and everything washed ashore have a deeper, darker meaning. In the Middle Ages, Leviathan was also described as the demon of envy and listed as one of the Four Crown Princes of Hell.

So the poetry continued to infiltrate the entire film which was really an enactment of The Book of Job in its contemporary form. The protagonist in the movie, Kolya was a good, hard-working, ordinary man wanting to lead a normal happy life with his second wife and his teenage son from a previous marriage. But Kolya himself was full of conflicts - he hated cops, but one of his best friends was a traffic policeman; he tried to fight a corrupt mayor by bringing in his lawyer friend from Moscow who blackmailed the mayor and also eventually betrayed his friend in a personal way. Kolya's troubles went from bad to worse until the sea monster eventually engulfed him and his entire family.

Apart from the first-rate performance by a group of unknown (to us) Russian actors, the music written by Philip Glass and cinematography by Mikhail Krichman were menacing, captivating and beautiful at the same time. Definitely two thumbs up for this outstanding foreign movie!