Russian Ark
Filmed in a single bravura 90-minute Steadicam shot, director Alexander Sokurov’s sumptuous audiovisual symphony takes a time-traveling journey through 33 rooms of the magnificent Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. As well as serving as the unnamed ghostly narrator, Sokurov restages events across three centuries of Russian history, including a theater rehearsal for Catherine the Great, a lavish ball hosted by Tsar Nicholas II, Stalin-era paranoia and the World War II Siege of Leningrad. Epic in scale and ambition, RUSSIAN ARK features 2,000 actors and three live orchestras. Sokurov and his cinematographer Tilman Büttner captured this technically dazzling real-time pageant on the last of four possible attempts.
Sergey Dreyden, Mariya Kuznetsova, Leonid Mozgovoy
- Notes From Pablo LarraínJust the idea of having this fictional French diplomat who walks through the Hermitage Museum in Russia and travels through two centuries is a very bold exercise of cinema. Back then it was insane that they did it in one single Steadicam take lasting nearly 87 minutes. It’s a technical achievement, and I have always been very curious about how the Steadicam operator could do it. I’ve seen movies made in one take, but never in Steadicam. I’ve worked with many Steadicams, and I’ve never seen anything longer than 15 minutes—the operator is already exhausted and has to stop. So 87 minutes feels like a real marathon. But besides that, I think it’s an existential journey through the history of a country. He had nearly 2,000 actors spread throughout different rooms, playing different roles in different centuries. That journey through the museum is about time. He was able to bring two centuries into 90 minutes and to do it in a way that’s not just a cool technical stunt in one take. When you do that and it really works, as in this case, it makes you think that you’re actually there, because you are walking behind this man. You see all these people with these dances, with live orchestras, and it’s something that has stayed with me. I learned a lot about Russian culture and Russian art. But there’s something in the title—the idea of the ark, of this metaphorical ship that can just travel over the years. It’s an exercise of time, of history, of art and of culture. There are very few exercises that can capture a narrative spanning 200 years of a culture with such beauty, elegance and sophistication.
- Notes From Sebastián LelioI remember watching RUSSIAN ARK in Buenos Aires, and my mind and heart exploded. Mainly because the technical achievement of narrating large passages with this holistic sense of time in a single shot is already cinematically extraordinary, but also the level of sophistication seen in those long takes: the costumes, the changes of era, the historical episodes. Sokurov leads us through the history of Russia seen through the eyes of a ghost in a way that’s completely captivating, magnetic and of undeniable technical virtuosity. There’s the feeling that everything occurs at different moments in time and yet all historical events are somehow contained within one another—not just historical events, everything that has occurred is inhabiting the Hermitage Museum. The poetry he achieves between this cluster of times that are at once different and the same, this sense of unity where everything is linked, has a tragic and deeply human sense. This is perfectly illustrated in the final shot, where everyone descends the staircase with those spectacular costumes, with that slowness, the characters completely absorbed in their present—but we the viewers are aware of their hypnosis, which is the same hypnosis we live in, without understanding that we are all floating in the sea of eternity, perhaps adrift, in the same ark.
