The Sacrifice Film Analysis

Demetrios Zioulis

TVF 1507 – Prof. Baeva

03/19/2018

Film Analysis: Leviathan Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2014 Leviathan (Leviafan) is a captivating tragic drama full of deception and coercion taking place in contemporary Russia. The film is shown through a widescreen, panorama style lens. The film seems to draw much influence from Russian cinema most notably, Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1986 film, The Sacrifice, and the country’s own history. The film features breathtaking landscapes and a barren environment that reflects the isolation of the characters themselves. The story is about Koyla, a man who is fighting a losing battle against the broken criminal justice system run by the town’s corrupt mayor, the leviathan, who is out to take his land and property

Upon viewing Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice, I was able to draw comparisons between the beginning and endings of both films. The openings of the films though different, are similar in that they both reveal nature and landscapes. The purpose here seems to be to provide a sense of isolation. They also seem to both be shot in the same wide-panorama style lens. Although the plots themselves are different. The ending sequences meanings, in both films, are very similar. Alexander the protagonist of The Sacrifice appears to lose everything dear to him, his possessions, home (which go up in flames) and his mind because he is taken away by paramedics. This theme of loss and devastation is apparent in Koyla’s character in the Leviathan as well. In terms of providing a real sense of what it’s like to live in contemporary Russia, this is what I believe was the primary goal of the director. In an interview conducted by Shaun Walker, Moscow’s - the Guardian correspondent, Zvyagintsev said “It’s like being in a minefield, this is the feeling you live with here. It’s very hard to build any kind of prospects – in life, in your profession, in your career – if you are not plugged in to the values of the system.” The director’s negative view of Russia was portrayed clearly in his film and it’s the reason why the film received such negative criticism from Russian-born critics/journalists. Vladimir Posner, a veteran Russian journalist, said “Anything seen as being critical of Russia in any way is automatically seen as either another Western attempt to denigrate Russia and the Orthodox Church, or it's the work of some kind of fifth column of Russia-phobes who are paid by the West to do their anti-Russian work or are simply themselves profoundly anti-Russian” (Macfarquhar 2015). This is only a single example of the scorn the movie received from its homeland. Despite all the negative feedback the