Leviathan

Leviathan (Левиафан, 2014) is Andrey Zvyagintsev's crime drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Kolya, a car mechanic, lives by the Barents Sea in a house the corrupt mayor wants to bulldoze.

So Kolya calls in an old army buddy, Dmitri, now a slick Moscow lawyer carrying a folder of dirt on the official. For a while it looks like leverage might win. It doesn't. Aleksey Serebryakov plays a man ground down by forces he can't name; Elena Lyadova is his wife Lilya, Roman Madyanov the mayor who never doubts himself for a second. A beached whale skeleton sits on the shore the whole time, a quiet reminder of how little one man weighs against the machine.

Zvyagintsev relocates the Book of Job to Russia's bleak northern coast, building a portrait of state, church and vodka as the three pillars of despair. The film took the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, the screenplay prize at Cannes, and an Oscar nomination. Bleak and offers no comfort, yes, but it earns every minute. Stream Leviathan (2014) online on iFILM.