Mark Kermode 

Leviathan – review

An expressionistic documentary study of the grim business of deep sea fishing, with a soundtrack to match, makes Mark Kermode vaguely sea sick
  
  


Less a documentary than an expressionist art installation, this arresting audiovisual tone poem describes the bizarre nocturnal world of a fishing trawler in a manner that is alternately baffling, alarming, distracting and unsettling.

Viewed from angles that occasionally seem to replicate the point of view of decapitated fish heads, and accompanied by a peculiarly (meta)physical soundtrack, this evokes a turbulent netherworld of heaving chains, gutting knives and wrenching nets, wherein slopping buckets descend into a bowel-like abyss as screeching birds flock overhead and rusting helms creak and groan underwater.

No interviews or narration are needed and none is offered, leaving the audience all at sea, adrift on the strange tide of sound and vision.

 

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