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(In Russian, with English subtitles) We have in this edition of the newsletter three of the 2015 Academy Award nominees, Leviathan, Timbuktu, and Wild Tales.  (Ida, the winner, was reviewed in an earlier edition, and the recently purchased Tangerines is has only just been added to the HCPL library system.)  In Leviathan, we meet Kolya, along with his wife Lilya and son Roma, who live together in a shabby but homey house with a beautiful view of sea and mountains, somewhere on the desolate but stunningly scenic Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia.  Kolya’s family has lived there for generations.  It is, quite simply, his home.  But now the corrupt mayor of the town wants this piece of land, ostensibly for a communications tower, but more likely as a new location for his own villa.  Koyla’s friend, Dmitriy, a sophisticated lawyer from Moscow, arrives to help Kolya present his case in court. But when the legal system is corrupt and those in power want something, chances are that an ordinary person will have neither the strength nor ability to fight back properly.  This is the story of a man who seems at the beginning to be in his own little corner of paradise, but at the end, things have changed irrevocably all around him.  The word leviathan carries several meanings, the most closely related being a biblical one, and while Kolya meets evil of biblical proportions in his life, he is after all, only a frail human in a harsh and bitter universe. Zvyagintsev also directed The Return, owned by HCPL.

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