November 20, 2012 (XXV:12 Aleksandr Sokurov, RUSSIAN ARK ...

Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov
Written by Boris Khaimsky, Anatoli Nikiforov, Svetlana Proskurina
and Aleksandr Sokurov
Produced by Andrey Deryabin and Jens Meurer
Original Music by Sergei Yevtushenko
Cinematography by Tilman Büttner
Film Editing by Stefan Ciupek, Sergey Ivanov, Betina Kuntzsch
Sergei Dontsov…The Stranger (The Marquis de Custine)
Mariya Kuznetsova…Catherine The Great
Leonid Mozgovoy…The Spy
Mikhail Piotrovsky…Himself (Hermitage Director)
David Giorgobiani…Orbeli
Aleksandr Chaban… Boris Piotrovsky
Lev Yeliseyev…Himself
Oleg Khmelnitsky…Himself
Alla Osipenko…Herself
Artyom Strelnikov…Talented Boy
Tamara Kurenkova…Herself (Blind Woman)
Maksim Sergeyev…Peter the Great
Natalya Nikulenko…Catherine the Great
Yelena Rufanova…First Lady
Yelena Spiridonova…Second Lady
Konstantin Anisimov…First Cavalier
Aleksey Barabash…Second Cavalier
Ilya Shakunov…Third Cavalier
Anna Aleksakhina…Alexandra Fyodorovna, Wife of Nicholas II
Vladimir Baranov…Nicholas II
Valentin Bukin…Military Official
Svetlana Gaytan…Museum Custodian
Vadim Gushchin…Grandee of Catherine The Great
Kirill Dateshidze…Master of Ceremonies
Mikhail Dorofeyev…First Card Player
Valentina Yegorenkova…Maid of Honor of Catherine The Great
Sergey Losev…Court Official
Vadim Lobanov…Lord Chamberlain
Vladimir Lisetsky…Court Minister
Aleksandr Malnykin…Servant of Peter The Great
Sergei Muchenikov…Museum Official
Yuriy Orlov…Grandee of Catherine The Great
November 20, 2012 (XXV:12
Aleksandr Sokurov, RUSSIAN ARK (2002, 99 min)
Boris Smolkin…Chancellor Nesselrode
Yuri Khomutyansky…Insane Italian
Valery Gergiev…Conductor
The State Hermitage Orchestra…Orchestra
Aleksandr Sokurov…The Time Traveller (voice)
ALEKSANDR SOKUROV (b. Aleksandr Nikolaevich Sokurov, June 14,
1951, Podorvikha, Irkutskaya oblast, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia])
has 58 directing credits, about half of them documentaries. Some of
his films are 2011Faust, 2010 Intonatsiya. Vladimir Yakunin, 2007
Alexandra, 2006 Elegiya zhizni. Rostropovich. Vishnevskaya., 2005
The Sun, 2004 “The Diary of St. Petersburg: Mozart. Requiem”, 2003
Father and Son, 2002 Russian Ark, 2001 Elegy of a Voyage, 2001
Taurus, 2000 Dolce..., 2000 The Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn, 1999
Moloch, 1997 A Humble Life, 1997 Mother and Son, 1994
Whispering Pages, 1992 Kamen, 1990 The Second Circle, 1990
Madame Bovary, 1989 The Lonely Voice of Man, 1988 Days of
Eclipse, 1987 Mournful Unconcern, 1980 The Degraded (short), 1979
Posledni den' nenastnogo leta (short), 1974 “Avtomobil nabiraet
nadezhnost” (short), and 1974 “Samye zemnye zaboty”
TILMAN BÜTTNER (January 22, 1964, East Germany) has 6
cinematographer credits: 2007 Why Men Don't Listen and Women
Can't Read Maps, 2005 “Kabale und Liebe”, 2004 Hinter der Tür
(short), 2002 Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (segment "The
Enlightenment"), 2002 Russian Ark, 1991 and Stalinallee (short).

SERGEI YEVTUSHENKO has four composer credits: 2009 The Last
Station, 2007 The Border, 2002 Russian Ark, and 1999 Robert. A
Fortunate Life (short).
SERGEI DONTSOV… The Stranger (The Marquis de Custine) (b.
Sergei Simonovich Drejden, September 14, 1941) has 24 acting
credits: 2011 Expiation, 2009 “Ivan Groznyy”, 2009 Taras Bulba,
2009 Help Gone Mad, 2008 Antonina obernulas, 2007 Jolka, 2006
Mnogotochie, 2004 Daddy, 2003 Do Not Make Biscuits in a Bad
Mood, 2002 Russian Ark, 2002 The Tale of Fedot, the Shooter, 2001
Podari mne lunnyy svet, 1999 Marigolds in Flower, 1998 Tsirk
sgorel, i klouny razbezhalis, 1994 Viva Castro!, 1994 Okno v Parizh,
1993 Drug voyny (short), 1993 Vladimir svyatoy, 1991 Abdulladzhan,
ili posvyashchaetsya Stivenu Spilbergu, 1990 Tank 'Klim Voroshilov-
2', 1989 Fontan, 1975 Moy dom, teatr, 1975 Vozdukhoplavatel, and
1966 A Ballad of Love.
MARIYA KUZNETSOVA…Catherine The Great has 17 acting
credits: 2009 Dvoynaya propazha, 2006 Vy ne ostavite menya, 2006
Travesti, 2005 Dreaming of
Space, 2005 The Italian, 2005
Golova Klassika, 2005 “Kazus
Kukotskogo”, 2004 Imeniny,
2003 Tayna Zaborskogo omuta,
2002 Tycoon: A New Russian,
2002 Russian Ark, 2002 “Lyubov
imperatora”, 2001 Taurus, 1994
Koleso lyubvi, 1992 Glaza, 1989
Utoli moya pechali, and 1987
“Gde by ni rabotat....”
LEONID MOZGOVOY…The Spy
has 13 acting credits:
2011 “Raspoutine”, 2011 Gogol.
Blizhayshiy, 2009 “Isayev”, 2009
“Ivan Groznyy”, 2007
Dyuymovochka, 2007 The
Border, 2006 Gadkie lebedi, 2005 Garpastum, 2002 Russian Ark,
2001 Taurus, 2001 Text or Apologia of a Commentary, 1999 Moloch,
1992 Kamen, 2004 Bozhestvennaya Glikeriya, and 2003 In One
Breath: Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark (short).
MIKHAIL PIOTROVSKY…Himself (Hermitage Director) has four
acting credits, all as himself: 2011 “Pozner”, 2003 “Shkola
zlosloviya”, 2003 In One Breath: Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark
(short), and 2002 Russian Ark.
ALEKSANDR CHABAN…Boris Piotrovsky has four acting credits:
2005 “The Master and Margarita” (9 episodes), 2002 Russian Ark,
2002 “Lyubov imperatora”, and 1992 The Waiting Room.
ALLA OSIPENKO… Herself (1932, Leningrad, USSR [now St.
Petersburg, Russia]) has 8 acting credits: 2002 Russian Ark, 1989
Otche nash, 1988 Filial, 1987 Fuete, 1987 Mournful Unconcern,
1987 Ampir (short), 1985 Zimnyaya vishnya, and 1982 Golos .
D.
From Wikipedia:
Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—2
Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov (Russian: Алекса́ндр
Никола́евич Соку́ров; born June 14, 1951) is a Russian filmmaker.
His most significant works include a feature film, Russian Ark
(2002), filmed in a single unedited shot, and Faust (2011), which was
honoured with the Golden Lion, the highest prize for the best film at
the Venice Film Festival.
Sokurov was born in Podorvikha, Irkutsk Oblast, in Siberia,
into a military officer's family. He graduated from the History
Department of the Nizhny Novgorod University in 1974 and entered
one of the VGIK studios the following year. There he became friends
with Tarkovsky and was deeply influenced by his film Mirror. Most
of Sokurov's early features were banned by Soviet authorities. During
his early period, he produced numerous documentaries, including an
interview with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and a reportage about Grigori
Kozintsev's flat in St Petersburg. His film Mournful Unconcern was
nominated for the Golden Bear at the 37th Berlin International Film
Festival in 1987.
Mother and Son (1997) was his first internationallyacclaimed
feature film. It was mirrored by Father and Son (2003),
which baffled the critics with its
implicit homoeroticism (though
Sokurov himself has criticized this
particular interpretation). Susan
Sontag included two Sokurov
features among her ten favorite
films of the 1990s, saying:
"There’s no director active today
whose films I admire as much." In
2006, he received the Master of
Cinema Award of the International
Filmfestival Mannheim-
Heidelberg.
Sokurov is a Cannes Film
Festival regular, with four of his
movies having debuted there.
However, until 2011, Sokurov
didn't win top awards at major
international festivals. For a long time, his most commercially and
critically successful film was the semi-documentary Russian Ark
(2002), acclaimed primarily for its visually hypnotic images and
single unedited shot.
Sokurov has filmed a tetralogy exploring the corrupting
effects of power. The first three installments were dedicated to
prominent 20th-century rulers: Moloch (1999), about Hitler, Taurus
(2000), about Lenin, and The Sun (2004) about Emperor Hirohito. In
2011, Sokurov shot the last part of the series, Faust, a retelling of
Goethe's tragedy. The film, depicting instincts and schemes of Faust
in his lust for power, premiered on 8 September 2011 in competition
at the 68th Venice International Film Festival. The film won the
Golden Lion, the highest award of the Venice Festival. Producer
Andrey Sigle said about Faust: "The film has no particular relevance
to contemporary events in the world—it is set in the early 19th
century—but reflects Sokurov's enduring attempts to understand man
and his inner forces."
The military world of the former USSR is one of Sokurov’s
ongoing interests, because of his personal connections to the subject
and because the military marked the lives of a large part of population
of the USSR. Three of his works, Spiritual Voices: From the Diaries
of a War, Confession, From the Commander’s Diary and Soldier’s

Dream revolve around military life. "Confession" has been screened
at several independent film festivals, while the other two are virtually
unknown.
In 1994 Sokurov accompanied Russian troops to a post on
the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border. The result was Spiritual Voices:
From the Diaries of a War, a 327-minute cinematic meditation on the
war and the spirit of the Russian army. Landscape photography is
featured in the film, but the music (including works by Mozart,
Messiaen and Beethoven) and the sound are also particularly
important. Soldiers’ jargon and the combination of animal sounds,
sighs and other location sounds in the fog and other visual effects
give the film a phantasmagorical feel. The film brings together all the
elements that characterize Sokurov’s films: long takes, elaborate
filming and image processing methods, a mix of documentary and
fiction, the importance of the landscape and the sense of a filmmaker
who brings transcendence to everyday gestures.
On the journey from Russia to the border post, in the film,
fear never leaves the faces of the young soldiers. Sokurov captures
their physical toil and their mental desolation, as well as daily rituals
such as meals, sharing tobacco, writing letters and cleaning duties.
There is no start or end to the dialogues; Sokurov negates
conventional narrative structure. The final part of the film celebrates
the arrival of the New Year, 1995, but the happiness is fleeting. The
following day, everything remains the same: the endless waiting at a
border post, the fear and the desolation.
In Confession: From the Commander’s Diary, Sokurov
films officers from the Russian Navy, showing the monotony and
lack of freedom of their everyday lives. The dialogue allows us to
follow the reflections of a Ship Commander. Sokurov and his crew
went aboard a naval patrol ship headed for Kuvshinka, a naval base in
the Murmansk region, in the Barents Sea. Confined within the limited
space of a ship anchored in Arctic waters, the team filmed the sailors
as they went about their routine activities.
Soldier’s Dream is another Sokurov film that deals with
military themes. It contains no dialogue. This film actually came out
of the material edited for one of the scenes in part three of Spiritual
Voices. Soldier’s Dream was screened at the Oberhausen Film
Festival in Germany in 1995 – when Spiritual Voices was still at the
editing stage – as Sokurov's homage to the art critic and historian
Hans Schlegel, in acknowledgement of his contributions in support of
Eastern European filmmakers.
Pasquale Iannone in Senses of Cinema:
Following on from Goethe’s famous observation that “architecture is
frozen music”, Raymond Durgnat has argued that cinema is
“unfrozen architecture”: “When the camera moves, the roofline flows
past us like a river. The camera tilts rapidly up, and banister and
staircase cascade down.”
However, the camera, Durgnat argues, “explodes
architecture” because of its ability to distort scale. The latter emphasis
on the camera almost as mutilator could not be further from the
Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—3
reverence, the child-like wonder with which Alexandr Sokurov
approaches the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, the setting of his
monumental film Russian Ark/Russkiy kovcheg.
The film’s sheer scale and ambition elicited gasps of awe
upon its release in 2002. Four years in development, it was the first
feature to be shot in one continuous, HD Steadicam shot covering
more than one and a half kilometres. Utilising more than 850
professional actors, 1000 extras and spanning three centuries of
Russian history, the film is set in a museum which holds several
million artworks. Russian Ark was, as Sokurov has stated, an attempt
to make a film “in one breath”.
The film’s narrative drive comes from the relationship
between the off-screen Russian narrator (Sokurov himself) and the
on-screen Marquis Astolphe de Custine (Sergei Dreiden), a 19 th
century French diplomat. Custine, in his inflexible conviction of the
supremacy of Western European art over that of Russia, is the oftencynical
guide to the 33 opulent salons of the Hermitage (which,
before 1917, was of course the Winter Palace). As the camera moves
through the museum, the director recreates critical moments in
Russian history, introducing historical figures such as Catherine the
Great, Peter I (the founder of St Petersburg in 1703) and Tsar
Nicholas II.
Charlotte Garson has rightly observed that the film, as an
extended plan-séquence, has its aesthetic antecedents in such films as
those of Miklos Jancsò, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) and the
cinema of Max Ophuls. Garson tantalisingly speculates on how, with
access to Sokurov’s technology, these directors would have
undoubtedly relished the opportunity of composing an entire feature
in a single extended sweep of the camera. However, for Sukurov, the
technique is no gimmick, no “vain formal feat” or “supplementary
aesthetic trump card” – it is the very essence of the film. It could be
argued that the key relationship of Russian Ark is not that between the
narrator and the Marquis but that between the camera and the
Hermitage. The film’s mise en scène is the living culture of Russian
and European history.
Of the directors cited above, I would argue that camera
movement in Sokurov’s film comes closest to the feathery, ethereal
glide of Ophuls, indeed many references are made in Sokurov’s film
to floating, birds and flying. One passage near the beginning of the
film, moving left to right outside a succession of windows recalls the
opening sequence of “Le Maison Tellier”, the central story in Le
Plaisir (1952), Ophuls’ adaptation of three stories by Guy de
Maupassant. Decidedly Ophulsian too, is Sokurov’s frequent
subjugation of camera movement to actors. In the densely populated
ceremonial scenes or the climactic ball, the movement of Tilman
Büttner’s steadicam, whether moving along tightly regimented
columns of soldiers or weaving amongst dancers, is never intrusive –
characters swirl around the camera unencumbered. However, whilst
Ophuls’ camera at times takes flight (and, as Kubrick famously
exclaimed, “moves through walls”), Sokurov’s gaze can be more
closely likened to that of a child – free certainly, insatiably curious,
but also cautious, often coming close to being a Deleuzian seer. On
the opening of each salon door, the camera hovers in wide-eyed
anticipation. Each opening is a revelation and none more so than the
door opening into “1917” and leading to the introduction of Anastasia
and her sisters, one of the film’s most joyous, exhilarating passages.
The Marquis shoos, then playfully runs after the children. Passing an
exhausted Custine, the camera too careers breathlessly after them. As
a snapshot of the twilight of the Romanov dynasty, it is

unmistakeably Viscontian in its elegiac quality.
The relationship between Custine and the narrator is one
whose dynamic shifts as regularly as the film’s diegesis shifts in
space and time. The Marquis is first presented almost as a Nosferatulike
figure emerging from the shadows. Wiry, pallid, hunched and
clad in black with sprigs of grey hair he becomes an irascible, laconic
guide to the treasures of the Hermitage. His teacherly status is
abruptly reversed when he arrives at a cold, colourless salon, filled
with dust and empty frames – we are now in the time of World War
II. A bewildered Marquis is warned by the narrator not to enter but he
does so nonetheless, encountering a museum worker in a room
depicting the hardship imposed on the Russian people and its culture
during the siege of Leningrad.
Tim Harte has observed that Custine “has gotten a stark
glimpse of the mortality
that contrasts with the
film’s earlier evocations
of the eternal within the
ubiquitous ‘living’
frames featured
elsewhere in the
museum.” It is the
narrator now who has to
provide a history lesson
for the Marquis. Apart
from this wartime
segment, it is interesting
to note that there almost
nothing in the film on
the Soviet era, with no
mention of figures such
as Lenin or Stalin.
Somewhat
predictably for a film
whose visuals are so
spectacular, the film’s sound design has been largely neglected in
critical writings. There can surely be little doubt that the meticulous
visual choreography is also matched by the aural. After the opening
titles, and before a fade-in allows the camera to begin its flight,
Sokurov introduces his narrator in complete darkness, with gusts of
wind whistling on the soundtrack. The director’s own delivery is akin
to that of one who has awoken from deep sleep in a state of
bewilderment: “Where am I? Where are they rushing to? Has this all
been staged for me? Am I expected to play a role?” If we return to the
motif of the child, this emergence from darkness is of course akin to
birth.
As the camera progresses through the Hermitage, the
soundtrack is peppered by whispers, chatter and hushed laughter from
a plethora of characters. But constant throughout the film is an
audible breathing – presumably of the narrator – symbolic of a culture
that is living, a culture “destined to sail forever”.
Harry Sheehan in LA Weekly, Jan 10-16, 2003, “Russian Ark”:
Writer-director Alexander (née Aleksandr) Sokurov — a perennial
presence at major film festivals with such recent work as Taurus
(2000), Moloch (1999) and, earlier and much more satisfactorily,
Mother and Son (1996) — is on the whole more respected than
beloved. Before attending film school, the now-51-year-old country
boy – turned – St. Petersburger got his university degree in history,
Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—4
and has looked there for his subject matter ever since. Only it's not
just history, to hear his admirers tell it: On Sokurov's own official
Web site, one Russian critic describes the filmmaker's subject as
"man and his fate" — surely a daunting ambition for anyone's
lifework, and one that has led to accusations of grandiosity.
Certainly, only an artist with an inflated sense of mission could
conceive of his work as a kind of biblical ark for 300 years of modern
Russian history. Russian Ark opens with a black screen and the voice
of an unnamed filmmaker (Sokurov's, actually) explaining that he's
just regaining consciousness after some mysterious "accident" —
perhaps, the viewer may come to believe, the historical "anomaly" of
Russian communism. When the black gives way to a clear image,
we're in a back courtyard of the Hermitage museum complex (of
which Peter the Great's Winter Palace is the oldest building) amid
officers and ladies,
dressed in 18thcentury
finery, as they
make their way to a
party inside. The
camera/unseen
filmmaker scurries
along with them and
soon meets up with
the figure who will be
our companion and
guide, a 19th-century
French diplomat
known only as the
Marquis (Sergey
Dreiden) — a man of
exquisite taste, and at
the same time a
familiar Russian
punching bag, the
Western dilettante
blind to the depths of the aggrieved Russian soul.
With the Marquis' appearance, the film settles into its formal
structure, a journey through the Hermitage as art museum and living
historical presence. Working with German cinematographer Tilman
Büttner, who was the Steadicam operator on Tom Tykwer's Run Lola
Run, Sokurov shot all of Russian Ark as one continuous take. To
accomplish this, he employed a high-definition video camera that
stored its images on a specially developed portable hard drive that
could record up to 100 minutes of uncompressed images. (The video
image was eventually transferred to 35mm film.) As the camera
makes its way through the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, the
"ark" of the title, it weaves in and out of time periods, assessing
canvases and sculptures, glimpsing small vignettes and vast scenes.
To make sure that our eyes don't get bored, the camera moves up,
down and all around, compensating for the absence of editing by
continually reframing the action.
But clearly, something more serious than stylistic innovation is
afoot here — something too serious, Sokurov must have felt, for mere
drama. Russian Ark doesn't act so much as it muses: on art, on
history, on Russia versus the West, on politics. The first long segment
of the tour touches upon the creation of the Winter Palace by Peter
the Great (Maxim Sergeyev), whom we spy in a small room, dressed
in one of his favored peasant costumes, thrashing a general
presumptuous enough to have made advances to a princess. This

Asiatic tyrant, the Marquis sniffs, is a cultural parvenu who, tellingly,
built his "European" edifice on a swamp.
Sokurov's rejoinder is purely cinematic, a stunning coup of motion
that brings us up and down twisting
staircases, out into a vineyard of ropes and
creaking pulleys, a working backstage,
down across the top of an orchestra pit, and
up to a balcony where Catherine the Great
(who founded the Hermitage as a museum
and stocked it with paintings and sculpture)
directs her own play, then dashes out to an
upstairs foyer in desperate need of a place
in which to "piss." High art, low comedy,
hard labor and royal prerogative are here
thrown together in an elegant unity, a
breathtaking demonstration of Russian
cinematic — hence artistic — brilliance.
Russian Ark now begins a new sequence, detouring into a gallery
filled with modern-day museum visitors. Without finding the Marquis
particularly out of place, two of them — a doctor and an actor, friends
of Sokurov — draw him over to a Tintoretto painting (The Birth of
John the Baptist) and discuss the symbolism of a cat and a chicken.
Next, the Marquis encounters a blind woman feeling a statue; she
takes him onward to her favorite painting and stands aside as he
smells the oil on the canvas.
An intense desire to reanimate the artworks by bringing all the
senses to bear on them culminates in a gallery of Goyas. Both the
Roman Catholic Marquis and the ever-unseen Sokurov are struck
dumb by the religiously themed canvases, as the camera nearly
brushes up against them in a gesture of infatuation. By now, the film's
allusiveness has grown extraordinarily intense: Goya's rejection of
perspective and line in favor of color and light reflects the differences
between film and video. And in the very next scene, the Marquis
attacks a young Russian boy for not knowing enough to admire a
portrait of saints Peter and Paul he's gazing at, undoubtedly a
reference to the palace's Tower of Saints Peter and Paul, a site of
much historical strife.
Up till now, Russian Ark has been technically fascinating, but
essentially cold and didactic. Now, energized by his encounter with
fine art, the Marquis starts rhapsodizing over the cultural
sophistication of the Russian czars. Oh, they were beasts, he says, but
what good taste! (He would naturally think so: The Romanov court
famously aped the French court in fashion and etiquette.) Then, in a
fit of idle curiosity, he opens a door, only to find a hulk of a
workingman — a survivor of Germany's 900-day siege of Leningrad
(Soviet-speak for St. Petersburg), in which as many as a million
Russians succumbed to hunger and disease — talking of death and
destruction. But the Marquis doesn't want to hear about it. He slams
the door shut and runs off to another building to join in a series of
masques, official ceremonies and, finally, a gigantic, brilliantly
photographed ball that, according to the press notes, depicts the last
Great Royal Ball ever held in the Winter Palace, in 1913. Transfixed
by the high life of the royal court, the Marquis doesn't want to hear
about the struggles of the Russian masses.
But what, in the end, does Sokurov want to tell us about them?
Between the big fancy-dress scenes, there are smaller, more nostalgic
moments. After a small group of lovely girls skip down a hall dressed
as angels, one goes in to sit with her father, Emperor Nicholas II, and
mother, Empress Alexandra, and is addressed as Anastasia. Sokurov
Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—5
is invoking one of the great myths of White Russia, that of the
missing princess who escaped the Bolshevik firing squad. Russian
Ark is dallying with reaction here, and the flirtation persists right up
to the film's end, which coincides with the end
of the ball. As many hundreds of noble and
military guests make their way down
decorous, baroque-neoclassical halls to the
huge main staircase, the camera walks among
this politely surging mass of polished
humanity and, in a last bravura flourish, turns
and faces them head-on at the door and
watches as they pass behind and into the street.
Sokurov displays enormous ambivalence
throughout these scenes of court life. While
the Marquis runs off to join in the ball — and,
indeed, on many occasions when the Marquis
runs off — the director's voice warns him to hold back. During the
ball, the Marquis, as he waltzes, can't even hear the director's voice as
he mourns the passing of so many lives, though not the end of this
way of life. As he stands and watches the partygoers exit to their
doom, it's with a certain detachment.
The film has a secret code, and the code book is V.I. Pudovkin's
1927 Bolshevik classic The End of St. Petersburg, a story of the
communist revolution. As dedicated to expressive editing as Sokurov
is to long, long takes, Pudovkin ended his film on the same grand
staircase as does Sokurov. But Pudovkin used montage to ascend the
stairs and focused on an individual, a revolutionary woman searching
for her husband.
Sokurov’s long, unbroken shot with a huge group of aristocrats is
a riposte to Pudovkin’s. Additionally, Sokurov’s movie ends the same
year Pudovkin’s begins. Is Sokurov voicing a preference for the
refinement of individual taste drawn from masses of undifferentiated
aristocrats over the masses as represented by a single individual. It’s
difficult to say. Both films, in a sense, are overcome by their
techniques.
But Sokurov does connect one piece of history with another and
that is no small accomplishment.
Jeremy Heilman on MovieMartyr.com:
Surely one of the most technically impressive cinematic stunts ever
attempted, I suppose one could say that Russian Ark, Aleksandr
Sokurov’s ambitious new film centers around a gimmick, but you
realize it’s one hell of a gimmick once you see it implemented.
Filmed entirely in one shot, this digital experiment is insanely
elaborate in its compositions and costuming. It makes even the
complex multiple split screen techniques of Mike Figgis’ Time Code
look simplistic. What begins as an exploration of the halls of the
Royal Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg soon becomes a tour of
modern Russia’s, and human, history. Instead of the series of
relatively static tableaux that I expected, though, Sokoruv ducks,
bobs, and weaves his way throughout the museum with as much
aplomb as any director working without a one-shot quota. The
script’s surprising playfulness keeps things fresh as the movie buzzes
along. History becomes a malleable and transient thing as with entry
into each decked out room we enter into another era of time and
history. When we encounter an elderly Catherine II after earlier
seeing a younger version of her frolicking about in the same shot
some minutes earlier, it comments mournfully on the rapidity with
which we age.

All of the sumptuous period detail that Sokurov piles on during
Russian Ark is given the expected reverence of a film that's been
made with the blessing of a state museum, but the film never becomes
didactic or boring because of the larger theme that binds together all
of the temporal and spatial places that we travel during the course of
the shot. With his typically sparse philosophical aloofness, the
director puts forth the intriguing idea that we honor history and save
art so that we might fend off our own undeniable mortality. In
scattered moments throughout the journey, this premise achieves real
emotional poignancy. The gracefully floating camera conveys the
mostly unseen narrator’s point of view, but he occasionally interacts
with a mysterious European man in black, who is a lot more vocal
about his sense of loss. Through their relationship, which echoes the
rapport between Russia and the rest of Europe, we come to
understand the way that Russia became a country that became so
utterly convinced of the power of its own pageantry. Other scenes,
such as the indelible one where we see a blind woman caressing the
works of a master sculptor so she might understand their greatness,
are no less affecting. It becomes quite apparent that the bond between
the transcendent nature of great art and the inevitability of human
foible is an unbreakable and necessary link, and Sokurov’s
examination of the two is as thought provoking as it’s nimbly
presented. For those who find Sokurov’s philosophies tiresome,
Russian Ark is still a must-see. Even before it builds up to its insanely
staged ballroom scene, in which 3000 actors appear in full regalia, it’s
waltzed itself into the art film pantheon.
Birgit Beumers, KinoKultura 2003:
Sokurov’s Russian Ark (Russkii kovcheg, 2002) is a 96-minute-long
tracking shot filmed with a steadicam held by the director of
photography Tilman Buettner, whose excellent camerawork could be
seen in Run Lola Run (Lola rennt, Tom Tykwer, 1997). There is thus
not a single cut in this film. The camera follows minutely
choreographed movements along a 1.5 km track with 33 sets of the
862 actors donning 360 costumes and masked with three buckets of
powder. The filming took place on 23 December 2001, the shortest
day in the year, in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, leaving
just four hours of daylight during the polar nights for filming after
two days of preparation in the museum. The film creates the
impression that the uninterrupted journey through 300 years of
history and 33 rooms of the Hermitage takes just one long breath. The
sensation of floating through history is achieved by a sheer technical
feat.
Sokurov compresses time. On the one hand, there are scenes
from the life of the Russian tsars in chronological order: Peter the
Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—6
Great beats his general; Catherine the Great attends a rehearsal in the
theatre; Nicholas I receives the Persian ambassador to take an
apology for the murder of Russian diplomats, among them
Griboedov, in Tehran; and Nicholas II has breakfast with his wife
Alexandra and his children, including Anastasia and the hemophiliac
Alexis. This sequence of historical events ends with the finale, the
last ball in the Winter Palace in 1913. On the other hand there are
characters of different epochs, rupturing the neat chronology of the
Romanov dynasty: Valerii Gergiev, the conductor of the Mariinskii
Theatre, conducts the mazurka from Glinka’s Life of a Tsar. Past and
current directors of the Hermitage museum discuss problems of
conservation, and worry about the authorities’ lack of understanding
of cultural heritage. Contemporary visitors stand next to historical
characters in the museum. Moreover, time passes at the speed of
breath: the empress Catherine is a young woman during the rehearsal
at the Hermitage Theatre; a few rooms later she is an old woman,
running off into the Hanging Gardens to get some fresh air. Some
rooms contain the future of the past: a room with empty hoar-frosted
frames remind of the blockade of Leningrad during World War II
when the canvasses were evacuated to Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg).
The journey through the space of the past is a journey through time,
but the two never intersect. History possesses chronology, while
existing simultaneously with the present and other epochs. The
Hermitage is an enclosed space, containing past and present,
preserving the past for the future. It is the preservation of the past for
the present which interests both the Hermitage museum and the filmmaker
Sokurov.
The Hermitage functions as the ark of Russian cultural
heritage, containing one of the largest collections of paintings and the
treasures of the Romanov Empire. In travelling through Russia’s past
Sokurov aims to recreate its splendour. He draws, however,
exclusively on that period of Russian history when the country was
most exposed to European influences. He excludes the period before
Peter the Great (the tsar who opened Russian to the West and founded
the city of Petersburg as the ‘window onto Europe’) and ends his
account with the last tsar, Nicholas II, excluding eighty years of
Soviet rule and ten years of post-Soviet Russia. Sokurov refuses to
see continuity from the Russian Empire to Soviet rule, as well as from
the Kievan to the Russian Empire; moreover, he is not at all
concerned with the politics of the time. Sokurov thus renounces the
twentieth century as unworthy of depiction and lacking cultural value.
Sokurov guides his viewer on the journey through the Hermitage not
with an authorial narrative, but through the character of the Marquis
de Custine, the French aristocrat who visited Russia in 1839 in an
attempt to find there a justification for an absolute monarchy. He
returned to France a convinced republican. Custine’s account of his
visit to Russia brought him success as a writer, while his harsh and
cynical account of Russian despotism was banned in Russia. Custine
finds Russia a terrifying police state, a country where people lie
bluntly to the foreign visitor and erect a façade of splendour and
entertainment to hide chaos, where the ruling despot is adored by his
slaves, who live only to achieve salvation of their misery through
salvation in death, where neither the church has any moral authority
nor nobility any duties. Russia is a country that lacks a national
identity, imitating Europe instead. Using Custine as prism for a view
on Russian history and culture, we are invited to acknowledge in
Russian history only those elements that are pale imitations of
European culture and history. At the end of the twentieth century
nothing of value remains of Russia. Russia without its European

connection is void. Russia is neither part of Asia nor its master. The
final image of the film leads from the ‘ark’ (Hermitage) to the sea
(the Neva) – a murky, foggy, grey patch of marshland rises outside
the entrance to the Hermitage:
Sokurov says farewell to Europe as he leaves the year 1913,
and thus annihilates Russia’s history that ensues. What remains in the
ark is the splendid past, eclipsing the horrors of the Soviet regime, but
also the Russian art movements of the 19th and early 20th century.
Having severed its links with Europe, the ship is destined to sail
forever in the limbo between Europe and Asia.
While creating a masterpiece of technological mastery of
time Sokurov creates an unbridgeable abyss between Europe and
Asia, placing Russia clearly in a European context, of which it is a
poor imitator, a chimera, a ghost ship. The Hermitage is the ark,
carrying Russia’s cultural heritage; as such, it harbours vast
collections of Asian, Oriental and Russian art as well as Western
European art. Sokurov chooses to ignore the Oriental/Asian part of
the ark’s content, concentrating exclusively on the parts that deprive
Russia of its own/another cultural identity and bear witness to the
imported cultural heritage from Western Europe.
Rob Blackwelder in First Person, Past Tense:
There is a genius to the experimental and utterly surreal historical
epic "Russian Ark" that has nothing to do with the fact that it was
shot in one uninterrupted, mind-boggling 93-minute take that passes
dreamlike through three centuries of Russia's royal past.
If this movie had been made traditionally -- several takes of
every scene edited together with close-ups, two-shots, etc. -- its story
would still be enthralling as it follows a traveler (or is he a ghost?) set
adrift in time inside the breathtakingly grand Hermitage Museum of
St. Petersburg, the former Winter Palace of the czars.
As writer-director Alexander Sokurov ("Mother and Son")
turns you, the viewer, into this traveler with psychologically seamless
first-person cinematography (by Tilman Buttner “Run Lola Run”),
the film becomes almost literally transporting, bringing alive the
courts of bygone Catherines and Nicholases as it whisks you from
room to room and era to era.
Guided by an eccentric French stranger (Sergey Dreiden), a
similarly limboed 19th century diplomat who is able to interact with
the people of the various centuries in a way the traveler cannot, we're
witness to incredibly tangible moments of history -- some random,
some pivotal -- as we pass through the opulent halls and ballrooms of
the vast palace.
Leaving an 18th century party through a dark staircase leads
Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—7
to an ornate private theater where a play is being performed for
Catherine I, 100 years before. The traveler and the stranger later
observe silently as Peter the Great belittles a subservient courtier, and
subsequently debate history's perception of the man as a tyrant.
They're surprised to pass into the present momentarily and discuss the
museum's magnificent collection with modern patrons before opening
a door and finding themselves in the middle of a the Nazi siege on
Leningrad (which was the city's name during the Soviet era).
And on it goes, in one fluid steadycam shot without a single edit,
through a dozen eras of Russian history; through scores of
magnificent rooms with decorated ceilings and marble walls; through
hundreds upon hundreds of lavishly costumed extras; and through
curious philosophical discussions between the two unwitting
companions about Russian history and culture.
The logistical feats of this movie are unprecedented -- imagine the
planning involved in having a 150-room museum filled with
hundreds of people in period costume (including four live orchestras),
all of whom must be in precisely the right places at the right times
because there can be no second take. But "Russian Ark" is so vivid
and spellbinding that such rational thoughts will be the farthest thing
from your mind as you're drawn into the eras and events that unfold
before your eyes.
The history is fascinating, whether you're familiar with
Russia's past or not (although I'm sure the more one knows, the better
it gets), and the journey of its characters as they slip between epochs
is engrossingly bizarre.
The performance of Dreiden as the aged, unruly-haired and
slightly Puckish stranger -- an eerily calm oddity in a long, capsleeved
winter coat who keeps his arms folded formally behind his
back except when struck with the impulse to be flamboyantly
theatrical -- is strange enough to keep the traveler (and by extension
us filmgoers) off balance. But he is congruent enough in the movie's
living history to occasionally merge into a period party crowd, for
example, leaving us momentarily lost in time.
But more importantly, Sokurov's camera behaves exactly as
any of us might if we found ourselves invisibly enveloped in another
time and place. Fascinated by every detail, sometimes we the traveler
become distracted, staring at the tense hands of a royal guard. Other
times we watch in amazed bewilderment as a museum employee
backs away from us in a startled manner. What does he see? During a
19th Century ball, we float through the dancers, then move across the
room to see the view from the orchestra stage (providing the film's
one visual mistake for the detail-oriented -- a musician wearing
modern glasses).

"Russian Ark" may be an astonishing achievement in
filmmaking, but what makes it unforgettable is Sokurov's ability to
draw us so deeply into the vibrant worlds he conjures -- without any
cinematic slight of hand -- that the technical aspects of the picture
Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—8
become invisible and forgotten.
Quite simply, I've never seen -- or even imagined -- anything
like it.
COMING UP IN THE FALL 2012 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXV:
Nov 27 WHITE MATERIAL Claire Denis 2009
Dec 4 A SEPARATION Asghar Farhadi 2011
CONTACTS:
...email Diane Christian: engdc@buffalo.edu
…email Bruce Jackson bjackson@buffalo.edu
...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com
...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto list@buffalofilmseminars.com
....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/
The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center
and State University of New York at Buffalo
with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News
Spring 2013 Buffalo Film Seminars XXVI (preliminary screening list):
George Pabst, Pandora’s Box 1929
Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator 1940
Marcel Carné, Les visiteurs du soir1942
Jean Vigo, L’Atalante 1947
Orson Welles, Touch of Evil 1958
Kon Ichikawa, Revenge of a Kabuki Actor 1963
John Huston, Fat City 1972
Volker Schlöndorf, The Tin Drum 1979
Mike Leigh, Naked 1994
Michael Cimino, Heaven’s Gate 2000
Paul Thomas Anderson, Punch-Drunk Love 2002
Sidney Lumet, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead 2007
Zack Snyder, Watchmen 2009
Marleen Gorris, Within the Whirlwind 2009