In the Bible, Job suffers endlessly. God lets Satan take his children, his wealth and physically afflict him with no end in sight. It’s a test of faith, and a parable (or that rationalizing opium of the masses that Marx was so down on) as to why God allows such inequitable ills to wreak havoc on the faithful good. A similar ordeal faces the unfortunate Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov) in director Andrey Zvyagintsev’sLeviathan. Kolya becomes the target of the corrupt mayor (Roman Madyanov, brilliantly conjuring up shades of Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday and current Russian President Vladimir Putin) in a northwestern Russian province, near the Finnish border. The unscrupulous magistrate desires Kolya’s land because of its strategic locale, situated between the sea and a broad waterway—and he’s more than willing to bend his official rule to legally wrest the holding. Continue reading →