Leviathan
Cast:
Alexei Serebriakov, Elena Lyadova, Roman Madyanov, Sergey Pokhodaev
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
140 minutes
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
140 minutes
Grizzled, sozzled Kolia (Alexei Serebriakov) makes a modest living as a mechanic in a remote fishing village in Northern Russia. He shares his rambling shack with second wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova) and brooding son Roma (Sergey Pokhodaev). He grudgingly does car repair favours for his police mates, and together, they knock back vodka at a vociferous rate. Meantime, there’s an overweight, corrupt bureaucrat intent on stealing his land.
Kolia is caught up in the lengthy appeals process of an ongoing legal dispute with this character – the mayor, Vadim (Roman Madyanov), who is drunk on power and also frequently, on vodka, and who treats the locale like his personal property. He has sanctioned Kolia’s land for the purpose of “community development” but this odious lump of self-interest really just wants a nice spot on which to build his new palatial building. Vadim’s appropriation of dated zoning law has been shoddy, and worse, he has suckered Kolia out of a fair price. A bored judge rattles off the claims and counter-claims as if reciting pages from the phone book, which, incidentally, she might as well be doing, for all the good the whole kangaroo court appeals process does for Kolia's complaints. He calls in a favour from an ex-army pal, Dimitri (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), who has made a name for himself as a Moscow lawyer. Sharp-suited and quick-witted Dimitri’s ability to name check the right Big City people makes the mayor sit up and take notice, as does the folder he carries that outlines Vadim’s misdeeds. It looks as though a smoking gun might just solve the problem, but don’t forget this is a place where that sentence is all-too-often subject to literal interpretation.
A marital sub-plot exposes Kolia to conflict on a second front, and Dimitri’s resolution skills are unwelcome and of no use. We see the aftermath of violent confrontation, in scenes that demonstrate the brutes we’re all capable of being to each other. If, on the surface this storyline seems to diverge from the political narrative, it actually solidifies the source text’s case for why government is a necessary evil.
A patronising priest encourages Kolia to take a leaf out of biblical Job’s book, and accept his run of misfortune more pragmatically. "Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a fish hook?," he asks. Preventing the whole piece from becoming unduly ponderous and excessively ‘Russian’, Zvyagintsev lets his ideas percolate with ample light and shade. The dialogue is riddled with one-liners. When Kolia and his mates use official portraits of ex-Presidents and Premiers for target practice, but hold their fire for the incumbents who lack “historical perspective”. “Let them ripen up a bit,” they wink; a smart move in a film that, astonishingly, was made with partial Russian government support.
The Leviathan book famously introduced the visual metaphor of functional government as the mighty sea creature that preserves the peace and prevents civil war. In Zvyagintsev’s examination of the relative health of the modern Russian body politic, enormous whale fossils litter the coastline out front of Kolia’s kitchen window. Zvyagintsev may not be able to turn the tide in time to save his protagonist's cherished waterside home, but this fine and provocative film’s broader themes speak to the power of the ripple effect.
Son Of A Gun
Cast:
Ewan McGregor, Brenton Thwaites, Alicia Vikander
Director: Julius Avery
109 mins
Director: Julius Avery
109 mins
Locked up for a minor crime, 19-year-old JR (Brenton Thwaites) quickly learns the harsh realities of prison life. There is no survival guide. Protection - if you can get it - is paramount. After a chance encounter, JR finds himself under the watchful eye of notorious criminal, Brendan Lynch (Ewan McGregor). But protection comes at a price; Lynch and his crew have plans for their young protégé and soon JR's debt is called in. Outside, JR must help secure Lynch's freedom, staging a daring prison break. As a reward, he's invited to join the crew as they plan a series of heists that promise to deliver millions. But as things start to go wrong, a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues and JR soon finds himself on a collision course with his former mentor, unsure of whom he can trust.
A debut feature from Julius Avery, this enjoyable Aussie crime thriller holds its own, largely due to the winning combination of Ewan McGregor and Brenton Thwaites as the master criminal and his apprentice. Thwaites plays JR, the rookie with whom we gain our first impressions of life behind bars, while McGregor's notorious criminal Brendan teaches JR there is no such thing as a free lunch. The film is at its best in the first half, when characters are established and debts incurred; things get a little forced and less than credible towards the end.
There are no half measures: it's all or nothing, Brendan tells JR when the latter finds that he needs protection against the incarcerated tattooed thugs who bully young prisoners. If I have a criticism, it is the way the establishment of the relationship between Brendan and JR evolves. The fact that JR shows the main con a chess move is surely not enough for acceptance into the inner circle. But that reservation aside, the action hots up when JR is released after serving his six months inside and finds himself set up in a stylish gaff, with an ocean view where he meets a pretty girl called Tasha (Alicia Vikander). Leaving him with wads of money and a mobile phone, she tells him 'someone will ring and tell you what to do'. The phone rings, of course, and instructions are given. By this time, he has learned that Tasha wears a good luck charm around her neck with the inscription 'things are not as you imagine.'
After an audacious prison escape, there's a wild plot involving the Russian mob, gold nuggets and some nasty characters who engage in double crosses. But it is the relationship between Brendan and JR that forms the crux of the film; the prominence Avery gives the romance between JR and Tasha lessens the bite of the characters to some extent, working slightly to its detriment. The Australian cast is all excellent and Avery effectively keeps everything together. Things all seem a little pat as the exposition plays out, but the barren West Australian landscape provides an effective backdrop to the action and the production elements are excellent.
