The word "leviathan" stirs up a number of thoughts.  For some, it is the title of Englishman Thomas Hobbes' text arguing for a strong and unforgiving central government; for others, it is the variously named animal described in the later chapters of the Book of Job; for still others, it is a generic term for a large and overwhelming governmental authority.
     "Leviathan," a movie filmed in Russia and directed by a native Russian which I saw recently, takes the third view.  It's a sad story, really, a dark tale of how one man, Kolya, attempts to challenge the system, the "leviathan," and loses, horribly.  The tale begins when the government, the "leviathan," announces that it is taking Kolya's "to die for" piece of coastal property for a major economic development.  Unhappy that he has had no say in the matter, Kolya takes the matter to court.  He hires a lawyer to come from Moscow to argue his case.
     As the story unfolds, things go from bad to worse.  First, the courts deny Kolya's petition.  Second, when Kolya and his lawyer then go to the police station to file a new petition, he is arrested after yelling at a police officer.  Third, after the lawyer confronts the mayor of the town about the many financial improprieties underlying the effort to acquire the property, he is taken out of town and beaten up.  Fourth, Kolya's wife goes missing (although we are led to believe she took her life).  When her body is found, washed in by the ocean tide, Kolya is arrested, fairly or not, for her alleged murder.  He is subsequently sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
     As the movie draws to a close, we see a wrecking machine tearing apart Kolya's house, bit by bit eradicating the lives that once existed there.  Then we see the mayor enjoying a meal in a fine restaurant, smug, happy, and delighted to hear of Kolya's sentence. Finally, we see a shot of the prison where Kolya will spend the next fifteen years of his life.
     So what's the point?  Life can indeed be a miserable experience.  Too many people live lives like Kolya's, lives in which they feel as if everything is against them, with no way out.  Existence seems a prison.
     And in many ways, it is.  We did not ask to be born, and we usually do not ask to die. We are, to use Martin Heidegger's word, "thrown" into this existence.  The choice is never ours.
     And even though we can live and be happy just the same, we will still have no answer for why life seems good for some and terrible for others, other than to say, "that's the way life is."  And this solves nothing.
     If we believe God is there, however, do we have an answer for Kolya?  In in this life, nothing definitive.  But we can say that because God, in the person of Jesus, once lived and suffered much more than we, answers, somehow, some way, remain.  Bewilderingly and, in a way, oddly and tragically, because God is there, we are, too, present, purposed, and true.