The 向日葵视频 City University Film Institute鈥檚 series will conclude its 34th year at 2 pm Mar. 6 with Andrey Zvyagintsev鈥檚 Leviathan in the Kerr McGee Auditorium of Meinders School of Business.
The latest drama from Zvyagintsev, the acclaimed director of Venice Film Festival Golden Lion winner The Return. Kolya lives in a small fishing town near the stunning Barents Sea in northern Russia. He owns an auto-repair shop that stands next to the house where he lives with his young wife and his teenage son from a previous marriage. They are haunted by a local corrupt mayor who is trying to take away Kolya鈥檚 business, house, and land. When an old attorney friend from Moscow comes to overturn the abuses of modern law, the stakes rise for Job-like Kolya. Leviathan won Best Screenplay at Cannes, the Golden Globe Best Foreign Language film, and was nominated for the same at the Academy Awards. The Biblical echoes reverberate, providing grandeur and closure for this year鈥檚 Film Institute theme.
The theme of this year鈥檚 season is based on Viktor Frankl鈥檚 classic book 鈥淢an鈥檚 Search for Meaning.鈥� Harbour Winn, director of the series, said the theme is intended to help participants come to understand the purpose of suffering.
鈥淭he films in this series stress the importance of an individual鈥檚 attitude to existence,鈥� Winn said. 鈥淓ven when life seems restricted by external forces, we can choose the attitude with which we live and make meaning, to find value.鈥�
The screening will begin at 2:00PM at the Kerr McGee Auditorium in the Meinders School of Business at NW 27th Street and McKinley Ave. A discussion will follow the presentation for those who wish to stay. Admission is free, but donations are greatly appreciated.
ACCOLADES FOR LEVIATHAN
-鈥�Leviathan plays like Tolstoy, masterfully specific to these people and unforgivingly allegorical toward the country at large.鈥� Boston Globe
-鈥淔rom its chamber-piece delicacy and bureaucratic detail to a grandeur and implacable pessimism that seem as ancient as the land itself, Leviathan is a distinctly Russian tragedy.鈥� Washington Post
-鈥淭his is quite a movie, a bitter and compassionate work of genius that will reward repeat viewings and keep on getting better.鈥� Salon
-鈥淒irector Zvyagintsev puts contemporary Russia, as up-to-the-minute as Putin, under the microscope. Leviathan is a stupendous piece of work that transcends language and borders.鈥� Rolling Stone
-鈥淭he movie expands, breathtakingly, into mordant humor, impenetrable mystery, ferocious satire and classic tragedy.鈥� Wall Street Journal
-鈥淔or all his failings, Kolya, in the movie's terms, is a natural man, and so his fate in fighting his implacable enemies in the state has a mythic resonance.鈥� Christian Science Monitor
-鈥�Leviathan is structured as an intimate suspense story, with a Job-like hero on whom all sorts of hell will be visited by an uncaring state.鈥� NPR
-鈥淎 grave and beautiful drama, at once intimate and enormous.鈥� NY Times
