Leviathan

Great movie making or oops, I forgot the "record" button was left on. Ummm, I am opting for the later. Some terrific visuals but extending them "forever" does not make them better, it only lessons the impact and tires the viewer. Editing, editing, editing. It sorely needs some!

Don't understand all the praise Leviathan is getting and why the critics and majority of the audience are loving it. To me, it's the worst documentary film ever made, and I love watching documentaries.

This film was lazy, inartistic, intentionally annoying and massively indulgent. The shots were mostly shaky head cams on the fishermen often too dark to see anything. Or the camera was dangled pell-mell in the wake and the audience watched long stretches (like 5 minutes with no cutaways) of churning bubbles. Or the cam was dropped in a pen of sloshing fish for 15 minutes--no music, no voice over, often no discernible images. The quality of filmmaking is the equivalent of when you leave your video camera on by accident and it bounces along by your leg filming the ground? That boring, throw-away less-than-B-roll mess? Leviathan. There were tiny snatches of beauty; the first shots of the birds were stunning--until they went on and on and on and then were repeated later in the film in the same hammeringly repetitive manner. Augh! Not "avant garde" but truly awful posing as important. I love thoughtful docs and entertaining avant garde pieces... but this was the most punishing film to sit through, with so few moments of clarity, it made me angry. I pity the poor film students who will have to endure this exercise in bludgeoning boredom.