Leviathan
Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev
Opens December 25
Remember—Leviathan is not a documentary. Foreign films released—and widely seen—stateside run the risk, in our large and guileful land, of being mistaken for nonfiction, although nobody who saw them took Andrey Zvyagintsev’s first two tries, The Return and The Banishment, as commentary on Russia today. Both were set in a Someplace, Europe, where Russian is spoken but people are preoccupied with purely personal—let’s say supranational—concerns: faith, fidelity, filial and familial dues.
