The Cine-Files, Issue 14 (spring 2019) Diffractive Visions: Towards an Oceanic Trans-Corporeality in Leviathan (2012) Eamonn Connor The “eyes” made available in modern technological sciences shatter any idea of passive vision; these prosthetic devices show us that all eyes, including our own organic ones, are active perceptual systems, building in translations and specific ways of seeing, that is, ways of life. 1 The documentary film Leviathan (2012, 87 min.), directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, begins in darkness. Colours and shapes slowly begin to emerge on the screen amidst a growing cacophony of metallic screeching and distorted bass eruptions. I close my eyes to try and isolate the sounds. Leaning forward towards the screen, I scan and squint: a splash of water; the shadow of a gull; a torn net; a stretch of shrieking chain; foam churning on the surface of the sea. So begins a jolting cinematic experience in which viewers are immersed in the delirious sensorium of a fishing vessel in the North Atlantic. Tides of viscera, seawater and dying fish wash across the decks with the rolling of the waves. Corrugated steel crates overflow with gore as men hack the wings off rays and toss their broken bodies back into the roiling foam. The perspective whirls; cameras are attached to fishing nets, the helmets of fishermen, the bodies of eels, the vessel’s spinning propeller. In evoking an embodied experience marked by disorientation,