“Leviathan,” he said, raised important questions about the state of the country.

The uproar extended far beyond the cultural and political elite cloistered in Moscow and St. Petersburg. A few commentators suggested that the off-screen turmoil said more about the culture wars in modern Russia than about the movie itself.

The village chief in Teriberka, population 957, where the movie was shot, panned it as not worth watching. “We are all shown as drunkards living in our own dump here,” the official, Tatiana Trubilina, was quoted as saying. But after the producers arranged a special screening in the village hall and she actually saw it, she and many residents endorsed it.

Alexander Rodnyansky, one of the film’s two producers, countered that the movie highlighted the stunning natural beauty along the Barents Sea, in sharp contrast to the polluted human behavior.

Critical reaction has been favorable over all, with many reviews calling it both a universal parable about the crushing power of authority and an accurate reflection of today’s Russia.

Daniel Dondurei, the dean of Russian film critics, said he could not remember such a ruckus over a movie since the 1988 release of “Little Vera,” the first Soviet film to show explicit sex.

“I don’t think it is a masterpiece, but it is a very important movie for Russia,” he said of “Leviathan” in an interview. “If you thought life in Russia was horrible before you saw it, it is three times worse than you imagined.”

Those in authority or close to it commented in droves.

Yevgeny Roizman, the mayor of Yekaterinburg and a rare independent politician — a status that has made him the target of endless government investigations — wrote on his Facebook page that the movie reflected both a knowledge of ordinary Russia and a love and anguish for the motherland.