Leviathan
Country
Production
Budget
$4 000 000
Revenue
$4 396 821
Director
Actors
Aleksey Serebryakov, Elena Lyadova, Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Roman Madyanov, Anna Ukolova, Aleksey Rozin, Sergey Pokhodaev, Platon Kamenev, Sergey Bachurskiy, Valeriy Grishko
All actors and roles (10)
All actors and roles (10)
Scenario
Andrey Zvyagintsev, Oleg Negin
Producer
Aleksander Rodnyansky, Sergey Melkumov, Ekaterina Marakulina
Operator
Mikhail Krichman
Composer
Andrey Dergachev
Artist
Andrey Ponkratov
Audition
Elina Ternyaeva
Editing
Anna Mass
All team (28)
All team (28)
Short description
Kolya lives in a small town on the Barents Sea in northern Russia, where he runs a garage beside the house he shares with his wife Liliya and his son from an earlier relationship, Roma. The town's mayor, Vadim Shelevyat, wants Kolya's land, house and workshop for his own plans, and when Kolya refuses to give them up, the mayor's pressure turns aggressive. Kolya calls on an old army friend, Dmitriy, who has become a respected lawyer in Moscow, to fight the case.
The film was directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, who wrote the screenplay with Oleg Negin. It is his fourth feature, arriving between The Banishment and Loveless in a filmography that begins with The Return and continues through Minotaur. Aleksey Serebryakov plays Kolya, with Elena Lyadova as Liliya, Vladimir Vdovichenkov as Dmitriy, Roman Madyanov as the mayor, and Anna Ukolova and Aleksey Rozin in supporting roles. Aleksander Rodnyansky and Sergey Melkumov produced.
The production had a budget reported at around 220 million dollars, while its worldwide box office came to roughly 4 million. Audiences rate it 7.6 out of 10 on IMDb from about 60,000 votes and 7.4 out of 10 on TMDB from just under a thousand. A critics' rating of 8.6 out of 10, drawn from 146 reviews, sits well above both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- After the director learned Heemeyer’s story, he came across a text retelling a medieval chronicle from the time of Martin Luther (Michael Kohlhaas). The plot of the novel, written by Heinrich von Kleist, was almost identical to Heemeyer’s story in every detail. It became clear that this was a timeless plot, the origins of which, with some effort, could also be found in the story of the unfortunate biblical Job.
- In search of a filming location, the film crew visited more than 70 cities within a 600-kilometer radius of Moscow, traveling from Pskov to Vladimir, from Yaroslavl to Orel, even venturing into Belarus. The final choice fell on the village of Teriberka, located on the shore of the Barents Sea (Murmansk region).
- Filming of the movie lasted from August 1 to November 8, 2013. Shooting took place in the villages of Teriberka and Tumanny, and the cities of Kirovsk, Monchegorsk, Apatity, and Olenegorsk in the Murmansk region, as well as in Poshekhonye (Yaroslavl region). Some interiors were filmed in Moscow to save on expedition costs.
- To get into character, Alexei Serebryakov would take his character's costume the day before filming and wear it to get used to it, arriving and leaving the set in it. Having turned down other projects, he did not leave Teriberka for two and a half months, dedicating himself entirely to filming. Elena Lyadova did the same.
- Actress Anna Ukolova gained 15 kg for the filming, at the director's request.
- The first day of filming was marked by an unpleasant incident. During the shooting of the first scene, in which Nikolai and Romka drive through a stone gorge, the front wheel of a Nissan Terrano burst. Sergei Pokhodaev, who was driving, and Alexei Serebryakov, controlling the car from the passenger seat with a special duplicate system, lost control. The car crashed into vehicles belonging to the film crew. Fortunately, no one was injured in the accident. Due to the damage to the car, the shooting schedule had to be changed urgently. Another car of the same make was purchased in St. Petersburg and painted the same color. Simultaneously, the damaged car was being repaired, resulting in two cars being used in the film, both of which were constantly on set. Two or three weeks later, in the same place during the shooting of a similar scene, when Nikolai drives through the stone gorge early in the morning to meet Dmitry at the station, the situation repeated itself. In the very first take, two wheels burst on the main car, but Alexei Serebryakov managed to maintain control and an accident was avoided.
- In one of the scenes that didn't make the final cut of the film, Elena Lyadova's character drives away from the parking lot. While reversing, Elena collided with a car parked behind her. Everyone escaped with just a fright, and the director also compensated the owner of the damaged car for the minor damage. Thus, all the actors who drove Nikolai's car were involved in accidents. And this always happened during filming.
- In the scene where Romka runs out of the house to meet the arriving Dmitry, the director deliberately did not warn Sergey Pokhodaev, who played Romka, that Vdovichenkov would be giving him a gift (a model airplane for self-assembly). This improvisation was introduced from the third take and eventually made it into the film.
- The shot of the old photograph of the house, which Nikolai places on the table to show Dmitry, was filmed during post-production in the Moscow office after it became clear that the scene would be significantly cut. This panoramic photograph, taken in 1929, was found by executive producer Ekaterina Marakulina in the local history museum of the village of Teriberka. It is a remarkable coincidence that the camera angle overlooking the village and Nikolai's house was determined during the preparation stage, when the crew did not yet have this old photograph. In other words, someone 85 years ago set up a camera almost in the same spot from which the film crew decided to shoot this panorama.
- A 1.5-ton, 24-meter-long blue whale skeleton, constructed by the props department on a metal frame at the request of production designer Andrey Ponkratov, was assembled in a bay near the village of Teriberka over six days.
- A total of three and a half hours of usable footage was shot during the entire filming period, requiring 85,000 meters of film.
- The film's editing took 50 days.
- The film was shown to the selection committee of the 67th Cannes International Film Festival before the editing and sound mixing were completed.
- The film was supposed to open the Russian Cinema program at the 36th Moscow International Film Festival. However, the screening did not take place – due to the film's use of profanity, it was not granted a distribution certificate in Russia.
- In January 2015, a month before the planned start of the film's theatrical release in Russia, pirated copies of the film were illegally uploaded to the internet. Rodnyansky suspected the selection committee of one of the film festivals. Writer Dmitry Bykov, given what he considered the dubious chances of success for the Russian release, advised the producers to be glad that at least the residents of the northern territories where it was filmed would see the film in a pirated copy, and even suspected them of distributing the film in this way.
- For those who watched a pirated copy of the film and wanted to thank its creators, the website www.leviathan-film.ru was opened. According to the film's producer, the funds received will be donated to the 'Give Life' charitable foundation.
- Orthodox activists appealed to Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky with a request to ban the film's screening in Russia.
- The film features a scene where the characters played by Alexei Serebryakov, Elena Lyadova, and Vladimir Vdovichenkov arrive at the city's central square, where a Lenin monument is located. One of the childhood photographs provided by Elena Lyadova for filming shows her and her mother standing in exactly the same square. This photo stands on the dresser in Nikolai's house and can be seen in the scene when Pasha comes to Nikolai to inform him that the missing Lilia has been found.
- The scene of a feast following the announcement of the verdict in the property dispute involving Nikolai, Dmitry, and Lilia was halved during the editing stage.
- The shot of a fly hitting the glass at the beginning of the scene where Dmitry rereads a complaint he just typed on his computer about the mayor was filmed spontaneously when the director accidentally noticed the insect during preparation for the scene.
- In one of the episodes of the "Picnic by the Lake" scene, the characters played by Alexei Serebryakov, Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Sergei Bachursky, and Alexei Rozin each drink a full glass of vodka in honor of Stepanich's (Sergei Bachursky) birthday. Due to a props error, the actors were given a bottle of real vodka for the very first take, which they drank. Only after the "cut" command did the actors report that the vodka was real. All four assumed it was a prank by the director.
- The scene in the train car, where Dmitry returns to Moscow, was significantly shortened during editing. It was filmed in a real moving train. However, the train's route was short, so the crew was provided with two cars attached to each other "in reverse." Thus, when the train reached its destination, the crew simply moved to the adjacent car. The train then traveled in the opposite direction, but the direction of travel in the shot remained correct.
- The film's creation began in 2008. During the filming of "Apocryph" for the anthology film "New York, I Love You" (2008), translator and Andrei Zvyagintsev's assistant Inna Braude told him the famous story of Marvin John Heemeyer, a welder from Colorado—the man took revenge on local authorities for what he considered an unfair seizure of his land using an armored bulldozer.
- In the winter (already in December 2010), Oleg Negin wrote the first version of the script, tentatively titled "Batya" (Dad), which was set in Russia but mirrored the events of the American tragedy, including the protagonist's rebellion. The script was replete with profanity, which somewhat troubled the film's producer, Alexander Rodnyansky, and prevented the project from launching immediately after completing work on "Elena" (2011).
- The second version of the script, already titled “Leviathan,” was completed in the fall of 2012 and combined allusions to the American tragedy of Marvin John Heemeyer, the story of the biblical Job, and Thomas Hobbes’ philosophical treatise “Leviathan, or The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil.”
- This is Andrey Zvyagintsev’s most “crowded” film. The core group of characters consists of 8 people.
- The search for actors took almost a year. Several months passed between Vladimir Vdovichenkov’s audition and his approval for the role. During this time, Vdovichenkov received an offer to star in the British film “Black Sea” directed by Kevin Macdonald, starring Jude Law. Vdovichenkov had already given a verbal commitment to the British filmmakers, and then he was informed that he had been approved for the role in “Leviathan.” This presented Vdovichenkov with a serious choice, which he made in favor of working with Zvyagintsev.
- In the village of Teriberka, a set called “Nikolay’s House” was constructed, consisting of a two-story wooden house, an auto repair shop, and a greenhouse. Construction took place from May to July 2013 by the art department under the direction of production designer Andrey Ponkratov.
- In the scene of Nikolay’s first meeting with Pasha at the traffic police post, Sergey Pokhodaev’s father, Alexey, played the role of Pasha’s partner.
- During the filming of the breakfast scene in Nikolai's house after Dmitry's arrival, Romka is rude to Lila and receives a slap from his father. Eight takes were filmed. When asked how he manages to portray the reaction to the slap so naturally, Sergei Pokhodayev replied, "He hits them for real."
- The "Picnic by the Lake" scene was filmed over five days. The shot in which the stone thrown by Dmitry skips across the water like a pancake was filmed separately from the five-day block. Andrei Zvyagintsev and Leonid Dolenko, a shareholder in the group, personally demonstrated the art of skipping pancakes, taking turns. It is unknown whose throw made it into the final cut.
- The scene in which Lila and Angela gut fish on a conveyor belt was filmed in a real working environment at a fish processing factory during a night shift. The actresses received prior instruction and took the place of two workers at the conveyor belt. Along with Lilia in the factory van traveled residents of the village of Teriberka, actual factory workers.
- In December 2014, American film critic Todd McCarthy compiled a list of the ten best films of the year. "Leviathan" took first place on that list.
- The film mentions the Pussy Riot "punk prayer service" twice – near the end of the film, the group's name flashes on a television screen, and in the finale, this action is mentioned by an archpriest during a sermon.
- The film features popular Russian chanson songs: "Vladimirsky Tsentral" (by Mikhail Krug), "Gorodskoy shalman, zhizn' propashchaya" (by Lyubov Uspenskaya), and "O Bozhe, kakoy muzhchina!" (by Natali). According to the director, he selected "songs that can be heard in every dive bar and every small restaurant" and that make up our sound environment.
- The film received a distribution certificate before July 1, 2014, i.e., before the law prohibiting profanity in cinema came into force, and could have been shown in its original form. However, the film's producer, Alexander Rodnyansky, noted that the swearing in the film would still have to be edited. "We did receive a distribution certificate, but that does not exempt us from responsibility for complying with Russian law."
- According to director Andrey Zvyagintsev, the swearing in the film had to be cut out "while still alive": "There's articulation, but no sound—it's a trauma."
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Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
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