Leviathan

In Victorian London, another body of a slain girl has landed on the slab of a famous surgeon, who has also enlisted the help of two others to help him get to the bottom of the recent spate of killings in the city.

Whitechapel, 1888 – and there’s only one thing on the mind of most Londoners of the time; the frightful, horrifying, and truly macabre Ripper murders. To this day, the sensationalism of these gruesome killings still holds a deep fascination for many, due in no small part to the fact that the murderer was never caught, and that ‘Jack the Ripper’ never faced justice or revealed his identity to the world. There have been many subsequent novels, documentaries, academic treatises, films, plays, and television series which have deigned to put their spin on the whole affair, yet still, no-one has come up with a cast-iron proof of who the killer might have been.

Here, in Leviathan, from writer Bradley Harper, and based on his book A Knife In The Fog, we get another look at what may have transpired had three famous faces of the time come together to pool their respective talents. We are introduced, in turn, to Margaret Harkness (Cornelius), a journalist and author who has a special interest in the squalid lives of those living on the streets of the city; Arthur Conan Doyle (Bird), the famous author and creator of Sherlock Holmes, who obviously has a vested interest in deductive reasoning; and Professor Joseph Bell (Lloyd Davies), the renowned Edinburgh surgeon who was the basis and inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, whose eye for detail, impressive logical mind, and meticulous method of working, saw him become a useful consultant for police forces of the time.

Down at the local coroner’s court, these three heavyweights get together to pore over the body of a newly slain victim, to see what they can glean from the mode of her demise. Really though, the body takes second place to the exposition of the three main characters, as they stand around the slab and have it out over their own ideas and deductions on the case. The two gentlemen are rather stuck in their old-fashioned Victorian ways, and are of course portrayed as needing the fresh, new perspective and approach offered by the tenacious young woman in their midst. Harkness then bulldozes in and takes control of the proceedings, so that misogynistic prejudices don’t cloud the judgement of the men during the autopsy, and that only proper deductions are reasoned out.

Unfortunately, this means that Miss Harkness is portrayed as an irascible, obtuse, antagonistic and aggressive version of some sort of proto-feminist. Everything that comes out of her mouth is full of venom and scorn and she barely says a word that does not demean, diminish or berate the men whom she has been welcomed by to help. For the entire fifteen-minutes of screen-time, she takes the bit between her teeth and casts a shadow of indignance over the whole proceedings. It is very difficult to watch this performance from Lauren Cornelius because it makes her character out to be extremely difficult to like, when not a single word, glance, action or motivation is elicited that does not show a deep-seated hatred for men, outlining her as a ridiculously overplayed stereotype.

The story, then, also goes nowhere, as once Miss Harkness has said her piece, the film is over. Leviathan plays as an introductory act, or more specifically a pre-credits sequence to a television series, where the characters are introduced, the motivations are realised, and the notion revealed that the chase is on. Sadly, this is as far as we go, and we have to wonder if Bradley Harper’s book also stops there, or if he actually has a story to tell which will apparently get given to us when the rights are bought and a full series or feature can be developed.

Thankfully, the period costume, lighting, photography, and direction are all spot-on, with this one-room chamber piece giving the feel of a dark, dangerous London outside its door. Director, James Mansell, brings everything together expertly and boasts a clarity of vision which emanates Victorian London all over the screen. The titles and credits fill in the gaps we don’t see, floating etchings of street scenes in front of us by candlelight, while Mat Hamilton’s string heavy score drowns us in the misery and darkness surrounding the characters and themes of this tale. As a production, Leviathan is very well handled, and it would stand-up alongside other big budget Victorian London enterprises from the BBC or any streaming service, in the look and feel it provides.

With these three characters coming together, Leviathan should genuinely be a great introduction to an enthralling story which could run and run. As it is though, it lands as an average beast, which needs to round out its characters and understand better how they relate to one another, so that the audience is invested in how they work together to chase down one of the most intriguing cases in all of modern history.