Leviatã

Blood, guts, flesh, fishes, carcasses, knifes, butchery, filth, water, seagulls, workers, cigarettes, days, nights, alienation, Gopro cameras. This is sensory anthropology at its best. The viewer is trapped into this immersive world and forced to experience life and working hours through the fishermen's eyes. A fascinating, nauseous and vertiginous documentary film about industrial fishing. Masterpiece.

I've never felt compelled to counteract negative reviews on this site before, but in the case of Leviathan I couldn't help myself. If I had come to this film expecting a traditional documentary on the commercial fishing industry, I may have been contributing my very own one-star critique right now. Then again, if I'd thought this was going to be a traditional documentary on the commercial fishing industry, I probably wouldn't have watched it in the first place.

Leviathan is definitely experimental (though experiential may be a better descriptor for it.) It offers no narration, no facts or figures, no conclusion or agenda. The only dialogue we hear is, for the most part, distorted to the point of abstraction.

What Leviathan does offer is an immersive, hypnotic experience. The sounds and images are alternately nightmarish, surreal and eerily beautiful. Even the rudimentary glimpses into the lives of the fishermen on board are rendered at an odd reserve, remaining as enigmatic as the seabirds we see throughout the film, crashing into the black waves. Experiencing this movie is like being transformed into an alien observer; the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Of course, everyone's entitled to an opinion, and I can completely understand why a person might hate this movie. It truly is a Rorschach blot of a film, allowing the audience to engage with it from almost any angle imaginable. I think that's where Leviathan's beauty lies. Anyone interested in what movies can show us should at least give this one a shot.

LEVIATHAN has attracted a fair amount of negative criticism from users. The reason is obvious: it is an essentially plot less piece designed to appeal to the senses and the imagination rather than telling a story. Focusing on the fishing industry in New Bedford, USA, directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel create a visually arresting experience in which color and imagery assume paramount importance. The movie is full of memorable images - a flock of seagulls flying at night, a lone bird trying to find food on the fishing boat, the sight of the fishermen lopping the heads off their catch. The movie has a memorable soundtrack, with the sounds of daily life in the fishing industry forming a kind of musique-concrete style score that has a certain haunting power. In thematic terms, the directors are out to show the power of the elements and how human life often seems insignificant by comparison - sometimes the fishermen seem entirely at the mercy of the cruel sea. Nonetheless they acquire a certain stoicism that enables them to continue their work; in one sequence, for instance, a lone fishermen is shown watching the television during one of his all-too- brief breaks from his nightly chores. LEVIATHAN does not celebrate the fishermen's life; it is more concerned to create an experience for viewers, and more than fulfills the task.

This experimental-documentary film examines in a very concise manner the problematic of mass consumption featuring a fishing ship as an all- devouring sea monster - Leviathan. The viewer is immediately immersed in a dark vision of this demonic large steel beast which leaves behind the remains of sea creatures and coloring sea water in red, surrounded with the sounds of fluttering semi-living fish, chains, anchors, ocean and screams of seagulls. They all create this sinister sound like a choked howls from abyss. An impressive visual and sound voyage and innovative approach to the issue (mass consumption) characterize this exceptional work about insufficiently identified atrocities of contemporary civilization.

Leviathan is a bold documentary shot with multiple small camera's from many strange angles. The camera dips under the water oh so often and we see how birds attack their prey. We see up close fish carcasses in containers and blood dripping from tables where the fish are being gutted on board a ship. Meanwhile the crew of the ship mumbles inaudible and sometimes come into frame. Actually there is not much said at all in this dark and claustrophobic tale of life and death at sea. What are the filmmakers trying to convey, no Idea. But what is shown is fascinating and intriqueing. Is it a horror tale showing how our mass consumption threatens all? Or just a grim look at daily life of fishermen trying to earn a pay-check? Either way the film is a enjoyable - albeit a sometimes extremely slowly paced - roller-coaster of a ride. Maybe more of an art piece than straight up documentary but that's OK. If I want to watch people talk about the experience of fishing I can turn on discovery Channel.