Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Directed by Lucian Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, "Leviathan" is an experimental documentary set on a New Bedford fishing trawler. Both Lucian and Verena are members of the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University; sensory ethnography attempts to merge aesthetics with the anthropological study of people and cultures. Presumably the duo are attempting to impart the "sensation" and "feeling" of life on a trawler.Is sensory ethnography an art or an academic field of discipline? Is it both? Isn't good art already anthropological? Doesn't good art already convey the feeling and sensation of people, cultures and places? Conversely, doesn't a good paper or lecture by an anthropologist – arguably a "type of art" - do the same? Why exactly does Harvard have a sensory ethnography department? Who does this department hope to reach?Regardless, Lucina and Verena previously made "Foreign Parts" and "Sweetgrass", which delved into the worlds of urban chop-shops and rural shepherds. Both were comprised of interviews, dialogue, wide shots, and somewhat thin observations about labour, people and social relations. These films attempted to provide "insights" into their subjects."Leviathan" is a different beast altogether. Interviews, narration and dialogue have been jettisoned. Gone too are most medium and wide-shots, the film mostly comprised of close-ups stolen from small cameras mounted at odd angles throughout a fishing boat. These cameras capture roiling waves, dark skies, nets, fish, chains and much flopping, gasping and sloshing to and fro. The film is dizzying, disorienting, expressionistic, each shot like the pebble of a mosaic that never quite coalesces. Like obscure images torn from the swollen eyeballs of decapitated fish, "Leviathan" doesn't make much "normal" visual sense.Fittingly, "Leviathan" opens with an epigraph from the Book of Job, a book which speaks of the impossibility of capturing a Biblical beast. "Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook," Job reads, "or tie down its tongue with a rope? Can you put a cord through its nose, or pierce its jaw with a hook?" Do Lucian and Verena intend their film to be a similar statement on the "impossibility of capturing" certain "sensations" and "turths" via media? If so, good job. Or do the duo intend their film to be a "sensory experience" which honestly explores the sensory overload of commercial trawling? If so, then the film is mostly ridiculous. In the world of "Leviathan", fishing is a ghoulish horror-show, an unending blitz of stabbing sounds and discordant imagery. Here, everything is bathed in Old Testament doom and gloom, the oceans apocalyptic, the skies on fire and man and nature forever locked in a battle for supremacy; fishermen murder beasts by the millions whilst Nature reaches down and squeezes man.But this is not the "reality" of fishing or the reality of fishing towns (see Frederick Wiseman's "Belfast, Maine"). It's more a freak-show for easily grossed-out First Worlders beholden to hand sanitisers, tampons, microwave dinners, anti-septic maternity wards and pre-packaged, bone-less meat. "Leviathan's" plays like a film about the working class which panders to the pampered and the intelligentsia. Assuming, of course, Lucian and Verena intended to make a film about fishing. For all we know, "Leviathan's" literally the adventure of a fish's dismembered eyeball.6/10 – Worth one viewing.

Seeing this film in a theaters absolutely blew me away. The sound design and cinematography is absolutely brilliant. So dope. Subtle way to tell a large story, I loved how the movie didn't just blast out some fool talking at me about fishing. Who gives a f*ck. This was a more powerful way to get at the same point. I recommend this film to just about anybody with an open mind, but this is a MUST see in theaters to experience the power of this film. I can't imagine watching this film on a tiny computer screen DON'T DO IT!Powerful film, beautiful filmmaking, looking forward to these cats next flick

I've never felt compelled to counteract negative reviews on this site before, but in the case of Leviathan I couldn't help myself. If I had come to this film expecting a traditional documentary on the commercial fishing industry, I may have been contributing my very own one-star critique right now. Then again, if I'd thought this was going to be a traditional documentary on the commercial fishing industry, I probably wouldn't have watched it in the first place.Leviathan is definitely experimental (though experiential may be a better descriptor for it.) It offers no narration, no facts or figures, no conclusion or agenda. The only dialogue we hear is, for the most part, distorted to the point of abstraction. What Leviathan does offer is an immersive, hypnotic experience. The sounds and images are alternately nightmarish, surreal and eerily beautiful. Even the rudimentary glimpses into the lives of the fishermen on board are rendered at an odd reserve, remaining as enigmatic as the seabirds we see throughout the film, crashing into the black waves. Experiencing this movie is like being transformed into an alien observer; the ordinary becomes extraordinary.Of course, everyone's entitled to an opinion, and I can completely understand why a person might hate this movie. It truly is a Rorschach blot of a film, allowing the audience to engage with it from almost any angle imaginable. I think that's where Leviathan's beauty lies. Anyone interested in what movies can show us should at least give this one a shot.

This is a "documentary"... and barely one at that. Like some have posted, this seems shot with a Go-Pro and no enthusiasm what so ever, or attempt at any form of narrative. No one really talks, they mostly mumble. I did somewhat like the moment when the Go-Pro seemed to have been dropped at sea... was hoping they would leave it there... the fish could have probably made a better movie. Stay away unless you feel a need to know the inner turmoil that burly fisherman must go endure when bored out of their minds. Catch, gut, sweep, sleep... yawn.Stick to the one true Leviathan movie staring Peter Wellers facing off against a deep sea creature.