13 - Russian Ark (2002)

The premise is intriguing. Film a 99-minute movie which deals with 300 years of Russian culture “in one breath,” that is, in one of the longest traveling shots ever attempted, using the real Hermitage Museum as its background. People the film with over 800 actors and over 1200 extras in costumes created just for the film. Pull together a total of 4,500 people to work on the film. And film it in one night because the Hermitage could only be closed for a day.

Russian Ark succeeds.

Recounts the sole cameraman who operated the Steadicam adopted especially for the film, Tilman Büttner, “We agreed that if something went wrong in the first 20 minutes we would start again. Otherwise we couldn’t stop.” It took four takes to make the finished product.

There are some previous attempts: Hitchcock’s Rope was done in the length of takes that the camera of the day could do (10 minutes) and the pieces were spliced together. Gustavo Hernandez’s recent The Silent House (see here) was one long 79-minute take. Modern digital video allows for longer takes. Other films using the long take include Timecode, PVC-1, La casa muda.

Director Alexander Sokurov attempts to show the Hermitage as an ark for Russian culture which sails on and endures. A first-person narrator (Sokurov) accompanies “the European” through 36 rooms and various glimpses into Russian history located in the Hermitage’s palaces: we see Catherine the Great watching one of her plays in the palace theatre, Peter the Great berating one of his generals, Catherine II walking out through the  snow, Tsar Nicholas I accepting the Shah of Iran’s apology for the murder of his ambassador in a massive court presentation, a Stalinist Leningrader making his own coffin during the siege of the city in World War II, and Tsar Nicholas having an intimate breakfast with his family. Along the way we are shown some of the major artworks housed in the museum. The end of the upper class culminates in a grand ball in costume which ends with the staircases filled with extras as film ends. (The ball recreates the 1913 final ball given in Csarist Russia in the exact ballroom where the original was held.)

One of the problems with one-take films is discussed by film critic Ron Holloway. Most film critics, he feels, wait for the cuts, so at the beginning as you adjust to the film you feel almost claustrophobic, waiting for another point of view to relieve one. I would agree. The first part of the film I became very aware of the camera and its limits, but by the time we reached the later sequences that concern disappeared.

The story, as such, is more a didactic look at the Russian and the European views of the culture Russia espouses. Basically this becomes a film which simply wants you to experience the various time periods in an episodic manner without giving you more than one bridge character, the erasable European who looks down on the Russian society but doesn't want to leave at the end.

The settings and props are sumptuous and the costumes are often breathtaking even on the extras. If you see the DVD, watch In One Breath: Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark, a 44 minute documentary on the filming.

I find the film unique enough in presentation that it becomes a must see for anyone who is a film fan.

Russian Ark (2002) ****

Here is the last four minutes  of the film. Revel in the numbers of people.