Russian Ark

Originally Posted by Marquis de Custine in Russian Ark

Everyone can see the future, but no one remembers the past.

Has anyone seen this haunting and beautiful work of art? 96 minutes and one shot, one take, filmed in the St. Petersburg Hermitage Museum and addressing 300 years of Russian history. Essentially you view scenes from Russian history through the perspective of a phantom narrator, accompanied by the Marquis de Custine, occasionally interact with the people in the scenes but mostly remain unnoticed. Each room of the museum, which the narrator and Marquis are touring, features a different era from Russian history. For example, in one room, Nicholas I is receiving a formal apology from the son of the Shah of Persia for the massacre of the Russian embassy, in another, a carpenter from WWII Leningrad is building his own coffin. Here is the trailer, even though it hardly does the film justice:

Having studied Russian History in college and watching the film with a Russian native, there was still a lot that I did not understand. That's from a story point of view. From a technical point of view the film is amazing. It looks great, the costumes are great, and the technical achievement to get that one shot is just awe inspiring. I believe in was done in the 90's. And unlike today where we can easily do a 90 minute long shot on some of the cameras out there, that sort of storage capacity just didn't exist then.

If I understand how it was done, there was a steadycam operator hooked up to a sled on which was a large storage array. Behind the camera and dressed in costumes was the crew, who when the camera panned away would reset lights and props when needed. I think they were only able to do 4 takes and finally got it on the final take. Simply incredible. I recommend it for anyone who is into the technical side of film, anyone into a really great looking film, or anyone interested in Russian history.

Yeah, some of it is difficult to grasp, maybe because there is such little tangible plot structure. That is probably what Sokurov intended; he didn't want viewers to focus on the plot but rather on the themes and symbolism of the work. In any case I consider many aspects of modern Russian history as very tragic, something that is captured exceptionally well in the film. I think it's suitable that we get a glimpse of WWII and Stalin era Russia before seeing Nicholas II.