November 18, 2013 — Leviathan is an extraordinary collision of genres: an art film made by a pair of British and French anthropologists that works as a stupendous cinematic spectacle. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel – founders of Harvard's radically interdisciplinary Sensory Ethnography Lab – set out to make a film based in New Bedford, the "whaling city" of New England and the historic background for Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. But they then became increasingly fascinated by the city's contemporary status as a fishing port.
Sailing on an 80ft-foot "dragger", FV Athena, to the Grand Banks fishing grounds of the open Atlantic, Castaing-Taylor and Paravel equipped themselves and the crew with miniature GoPro cameras – new HD technology that has become beloved of documentary film-makers. The result, a dialogue-free 90-minute tumult of long takes and jump-cut editing, throws the viewer into a nausea-making, overturned world so vivid that it's hard to believe its scenes are real and not a clever CGI construction.
With the fish-eye cameras strapped to their heads, the film-makers and crew recorded the raging midnight seas from which are hauled the fish and scallops that will end up on china plates and linen tablecloths in smart restaurants. Remorselessly, they expose every aspect of this visceral business – often conducted in the dark, out of sight of land, on trips lasting up to 18 days. It is a weird otherworld, filled with bug-eyed fish slathering over the decks, clanking rusty chains and hooded figures like medieval torturers, all perpetually doused by the rising Atlantic.
Shrieking gulls plunge up from the dawn-slashed sky in vertiginous, inverted scenes as the cameras tumble upside-down. Starfish float beneath the surface like coral-coloured confetti. On deck, scarred, tattooed men eviscerate fish dragged up from the depths. In one shocking sequence, a skate dangles from a chain as its wings, the only edible parts, are excised – a scene not far from the notorious trade in definned sharks. Meanwhile, an indeterminate heavy-metal track grinds out from a radio, sounding more like the knell of an aquatic apocalypse.
Read the full story at The Guardian