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.

If you are expecting a neat little movie with a clear plot, that leaves you with a sense of having experienced something you can summarize easily ... you'll be sorely disappointed. This is a horror film in many senses, presented as poetry and intellectually obscure.

Its title, Leviathan, is a reference to the biblical passage that depicts man's encounter with a sea monster. Here, the monster is man, ripping life from the sea and destroying it in the harshest of ways, butchering sea creatures in such a matter-of-fact, emotionally detached way as to bring you to tears. But the way it is filmed creates a detachment of its own, sort of stifling the viewers' emotions so we can watch without turning away.

It is on its surface a commentary on the commercial fishing industry ... how we have reduced mass slaughter to an assembly-line process ... much like what the Nazis did to the Jews. When man turns against man, we are horrified. When man turns against nature ... it's just business as usual.

If there is a message to the film it's that we are the monsters on this planet.

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.

An interestingly filmed documentary that suggests a sensory experience rather than just capturing the conventionally "beautiful" images of the life in the sea. If you wish to watch a film that has a conventional narration do not watch this. The camera seeks to document fish, birds, nets, man, the sea etc with the same curiosity and the same intensity, everything being of the same importance. The camera moves a lot in this process and sometimes makes you feel dizzy but at the same time this way of documenting captures the essence of this world where everything moves and swirls constantly. Throughout the film there is an insistent mixing and blurring between the sea and the sky, up and down. The scenes showing the masses of fish tangled in the nets suggest a comment on man's voracity. Beautifully recorded sound. A bit bumpy but an interesting and genuine experience.

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.