Leviathan
Screening Dates:
Mon 9 December 8:45pm
Director: Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel
Starring: Adrian Guillette, Johnny Gatcombe, Declan Conneely
The rough Atlantic waters that inspired Melville’s Moby-Dick give rise to a rather different beast in this bracing cinematic voyage into uncharted documentary territory.
Already showered with accolades from festivals around the world, this is, loosely, a study of life aboard a New England fishing boat. But with a host of radically innovative formal devices and a complete lack of narration or meaningful dialogue, it utterly defies the simple label of documentary, instead delivering an incredibly visceral, primal, sensuous representation of seafaring life.
Directors Paravel and Castaing-Taylor have made careers out of blurring the boundaries of non-fiction filmmaking, and here they imbue their footage with a restless, anthropomorphic and highly unsettling quality. Warranting comparisons to works of avant-garde filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Leviathan offers a truly unique and intoxicating cinematic experience.
“STUNNING… AT TIMES HALLUCINATORY AND DISORIENTATING, AT TIMES GORGEOUS AND ABSTRACT, THE FILM WILL LEAVE NO VIEWER UNAFFECTED. AN ASTONISHING SENSORY EXPERIENCE” Time Out
Critic: Peter Keough
Date: 2013-05-24
Publication: Boston Globe
Quote: With its repetitive images of netted and gutted sea life, the film suggests that the beast is the human hunter himself.
Critic: Bill Stamets
Date: 2013-05-16
Publication: Chicago Sun-Times
Quote: Radical experiential/experimental video of bloody viscera and abstract beauty. Embedded/embodied lens as in Brakhage's "The Governor" and Geyrhalter's "Our Daily Bread."
Critic: Gary Goldstein
Date: 2013-05-10
Publication: Los Angeles Times
Quote: More an accumulation of often indefinable images than any kind of even remotely traditional feature, the documentary "Leviathan" proves a strange and unsatisfying endurance test.
Critic: John Hartl
Date: 2013-04-04
Publication: Seattle Times
Quote: Gradually you realize you're witnessing a nonlinear entertainment that's setting its own rules, and you'll either go with the flow or take an early leave.
Critic: Peter Howell
Date: 2013-03-14
Publication: Toronto Star
Quote: Edited together into a non-linear and virtually wordless whole, it creates a briny immersive effect that is almost hallucinatory.
Critic: Farran Smith Nehme
Date: 2013-03-01
Publication: New York Post
Quote: The adventurous souls who stick with it ... will find head-spinning images and a cumulative impact that does, in fact, amount to a story.
Critic: A.O. Scott
Date: 2013-02-28
Publication: New York Times
Quote: [It] offers not information but immersion: 90 minutes of wind, water, grinding machinery and piscine agony.
Critic: Stephanie Zacharek
Date: 2013-02-28
Publication: NPR
Quote: As Leviathan trundles on, it's hard to really know what Castaing-Taylor and Paravel are trying to say. There's no strict narrative here.
Critic: Melissa Anderson
Date: 2013-02-26
Publication: Village Voice
Quote: End of days or the beginning of new ways of seeing?
Critic: Joshua Rothkopf
Date: 2013-02-26
Publication: Time Out New York
Quote: Like the hypnotic swarm of seagulls constantly trailing the boat for scraps, we lunge for meaning.
Critic: Stephen Dalton
Date: 2012-12-18
Publication: Hollywood Reporter
Quote: Leviathan is an immersive examination of a highly mechanized industrial process, the men who work at it and the thousands of poor fish who cross their path.
Critic: Boyd van Hoeij
Date: 2012-12-18
Publication: Variety
Quote: The pic contains several striking visuals that range from disturbing to beautiful.
