Kolya (Alexei Serebriakov) is a small man with a small world. He is an alcoholic in an impoverished seaside Russian town, with a wife who wants out and a troublesome son from a previous marriage. All he has is a plot of land inherited for generations; if the local Mayor (Roman Madyanov) has anything to say about it, Kolya will lose that too. Despite locals he considers friends and a sly lawyer buddy (Vladimir Vdovichenkov) from Moscow, Kolya is helpless to change his lot.
Distressing and grim, "Leviathan" is best understood as a contemporary retelling of the story of Job, who, in the Bible, was forced to experience untold horrors while maintaining his faith in God, accepting his lot and eventually being rewarded. Instead of God, Kolya is faced with the oppression of a corrupt mayor and priest, the political and religious forces that rule life in impoverished northern Russia. His reward for accepting his fate is much grimmer than Job's. In a way it's the story of Job for a new era that has risen and fallen and seen that God, if he ever existed, long ago abdicated his responsibilities to his pettiest creatures.
Most of "Leviathan" was filmed in Teriberka, Russia, a town without much industry left. While the film is set in a fictionalized town — Pribrezhny — it's basically Teriberka. It's the perfect tapestry for the utter meaningless of Kolya's suffering because there are so many towns like Teriberka. They're everywhere, in every country. As the world's middle classes dry up (or, as in Russia, fail to really take hold), situations like the one shown in "Leviathan" become more and more common.
It will make you feel bad.
For all our enjoyment of possible awful futures (zombies? War Boys? Hunger Games?), "Leviathan" does good in setting its story in a real place, a place left behind in tatters, where the drama is never "epic" but always harrowing. It is the sad story of a small man, with a small world, accepting the small and undistinguished fate that befalls him. It is a stone's throw from reality. This dystopia is now.