After watching Leviathan, I could not help but think about the film we watched earlier in the course, Urga: Close to Eden. Though the films are about entirely different periods in Russian history, they focus on similar aspects of Russian culture that we have seen throughout the entire semester: the awe inspiring beauty of Russian nature, the complex relationship between man and nature, and the superfluous man.

First and foremost, both movies display the landscape in similar ways. For example, both movies begin and end with long sweeping scenes of the landscapes without any of the characters. Urga: Close to Eden focuses most on the steppe in reference to how the mongols coexisted with nature and roamed throughout the vast Russian Steppe. Though Leviathan takes place in a very industrialized modern Russia, there is still serious screen time for the Russian coast. The vastness of the steppe and the coast invoke similar emotions of awe and uncertainty in the viewer.

The endings of Leviathan and Urga: Close to Eden also both comment on the complex relationship between man and nature. In Leviathan, nature provides the location for Lilya’s death, which though left unspecified, is likely a suicide. Though there is evidence found that incriminates Kolya, Lilya’s husband, it is possible for that evidence to have been fabricated to make Kolya answer for previous misdemeanors against the corrupt Mayor Vadim. Regardless of the official cause of Lilya’s death, the ominous sea shown throughout the film is directly involved in Lilya’s death. The ending of Urga: Close to Eden shows the steppe where Gombo and his family used to live with a smokestack that has been built there. Though Gombo’s family practiced a fairly traditional Mongol lifestyle, the ending reveals that their fourth son works at the factory that was built in place of the Urga. The endings of both films invoke the complexities involved in the relationship between the Russian land and the Russian people.

A theme that both of these movies share that is unrelated to nature is the trope of the superfluous man. Kolya is stubborn and hotheaded, rarely thinking about what might be best for his family. He is a mechanic who constantly has trouble obeying authority, corrupt as it may be. Lilya is constantly upset with Kolya’s refusal to move on from his trivial arguments with Mayor Vadim that are impossible to win. Gombo refuses to modernize with his wife. He is so afraid of buying contraceptives in front of the women at the pharmacy that he does not buy them at all, even though it would be to the best interest of both him and his wife.