
Leviathan. 2012. USA/France/Great Britain. Directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel. DCP. 87 min.
Without dialogue, and composed of visuals captured by a camera without boundaries, Leviathan is a completely immersive experience. Upon a fishing boat that has departed the port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel accompany a group of men—who remain nameless—out to sea. The rhythm of the film reflects that of the sea and the routine of the men on board the ship; days and nights become almost indistinguishable, as the punctuation of time passing becomes the suggestion of a man dozing off on his meal break or the brief respite of a cigarette in between slicing extraneous fins from the catch. The camera accompanies fish stolen from the sea in large nets, sloshes on deck with waste accumulated from the ocean, and careens to the heights at the top of the boat. An experimental style, combined with sheer technological inventiveness, results in a manipulation of the documentary form that inverts our very conceptions of what it can be.