It seems super easy to compare the latest Russian cinematic masterpiece, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Leviathan,” to the great literary works of Fyodor Dostoevsky or Leo Tolstoy; just look at the number of reviews that described the film as being “novelistic.” And to be fair, the comparison (especially to Dostoevsky) isn’t entirely ungrounded. The film shares its breathtaking scope (and runtime), band of fully realized and psychologically complex characters, questions of suicide/existence and overt, proud references to the Bible with the likes of “The Brothers Karamazov” and “The Idiot.” Plus the film’s wordless, eye-opening passages rank with the most awe-inspiring moments of prose in any language.
All the same and regardless of whatever cultural parallels run through the works, these comparisons do raise the question: What does it mean for a movie to be like a book? Or to put it another way, what about one medium makes it similar or dissimilar to the other? And how can a work like “Leviathan” cross over in some/any way?
The short answer is it can’t. Literature and cinema work in fundamentally different ways, intrinsic to their form, and offer their audiences different possibilities. Reading something like “Demons” or “Anna Karenina,” the power of realization is vested firmly with the audience; the image of this or that character and their every movement, tic, stumble, intonation or sigh is up to the reader.
They’re placed somewhere closer to the author in terms of ability to shape their experience, allowing them to take ownership of the narrative, form their own version of the novel’s universe and invest themselves more heavily in that world. Hence the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s assertion that “a book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.”
This is not the case with film. The camera solidifies the world, makes it concrete and definitive. Millions of people may feel differently about Humphrey Bogart’s character in “Casablanca,” but they all share a single image of him.
In this loss of determination, film places the audience closer to the level of its characters; in the same way that they are subject to the whims of the film’s director/writer/whoever, the viewer is placed in a position of experiencing without imagining. They can react however they like, but definitions ultimately rest within the movie itself.
While this means that, unlike reading, watching a film offers far less room for creativity on the part of the audience, it does produce a direct line for the viewer to place themselves in the position of the characters, contemplate themselves in relation to what they’re seeing onscreen and to get outside of themselves for 90 to 160 minutes; this is what Roger Ebert referred to as the great “empathy machine” of cinema.
In the case of a film like “Leviathan,” which is very much about the loss of control and individuality that occurs in the face of the systematic indifference and corruption that’s rife in Putin’s Russia, taking the power of realization from the audience is very well matched to its themes. No matter how much we may despise the despotic, self-serving mayor of this small town, we are given no power over how we see him. He’s exactly as sniveling and hateable as he is presented, but we’re denied any further opportunity to debase him.
Compare this with something like Dostoevsky’s “Demons,” where we’re actively invited to interpret and engage with the abstractions of radicals and revolutionaries that the author presents; placing the reader in the place of a narrator or author allows the feverish nightmares to become real on an individual level while retaining control over how exactly the “great sinner” appears to each of us.
The point of this is that “Leviathan” is not novelistic because it’s Russian, or because it’s existential, or complex or long or anything. It isn’t novelistic at all, and the comparison does a disservice to both film and literature. Both media have intrinsic qualities that lend themselves better to telling certain stories over others, and neither should aspire to be like the other because this denies the basic fact that, in the right hands, either is capable of producing works of absolute, life-changing and powerful experiences that are only possible within their given form.
So do both. Read to be imaginative and understand the tremendous power of creativity, and watch movies to appreciate how difficult realizes these worlds are and be critical of the ways they are. And also see “Leviathan;” it’s fantastic.
What are your thoughts on “Leviathan?” Let Austin know at wellens@wisc.edu.
