St. Petersburg has some self-esteem issues. Perched precipitously between Russia and Europe both geographically and culturally, it has long wavered between the “civilized” yearnings of Peter the Great and the revolutionary tendencies that renamed it Leningrad. Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark throws us deep into the schizophrenic consciousness of the city and its cultural jewel, the State Hermitage museum. The film is notable for being composed of the longest single take in cinematic history—97 minutes. The efficacy of this technical gimmick wears on and off during the movie, which runs the gamut from quietly awesome to deathly boring.
With no coherent story to speak of, the camera assumes the guise of a narrator who leads us around the museum accompanied by an eccentric French marquis. Neither knows how they arrived there, that it must be a dream. Most of the film consists of a dialogue between these two as they stroll through the hallways of one of the largest museums in the world and witness scenes from Russian history. Moments when Catherine the Great runs slowly through a snowy courtyard and Anastasia cavorts down an endless hallway with her fairy-garbed friends are particularly magical. These and other famous personages float in and out of the frame, but the audience is shown few significant events. Rather, the film peeks in on trivial episodes, the ones that occur in the unexplored gaps of the past.
Russian Ark allows us the cinematic rarity of an extended first-person point of view. The audience becomes a voyeur, invisible and unstoppably mobile; there are no limits to what we can see. Sadly, the film insists on allowing us to witness primarily the banal and forgetful. At points, the film plods along, a weakness more troublesome than usual. When the central conceit of a film is its ceaseless mobility, any reflective segments or slow-tracking stretches are deadly. Sleep can easily be attained during the midsection of this movie as the giddy vapors of the opening confusion wear off and the stunning finale lies somewhat distant. The chattering has stopped, the camera is almost stagnant and the action in the frame deadens. The Marquis repeatedly says words to the effect of, “This is a nice painting” while pointing at works hanging on the wall. It is often difficult enough to stay awake while walking through art museums, but to sit in the dark and watch another do so is excruciating.
With Russian Ark, the question that resonates is whether the long, unbroken take serves solely as a feint or works in tandem with the content. French theorist Andr? Bazin believed in the supremacy of the long shot for its ability to present life objectively, as opposed to the constructed meanings of montage. Sokurov picks up the Russian extended take where the deliberative Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris, Stalker) left off. Mercifully, though, Sokurov’s tour de force feels shorter than any single segment of a Tarkovsky flick. Bazin would certainly be pleased with Sokurov’s film. With an omnivorous desire for all that can be seen, Ark cashes in on film’s reputation as the democratic art, allowing us to choose what to see from everything that falls within the frame.
To be clear, this is an impressive achievement. Logistically, the film cannot be matched, as its one shot spans 33 rooms and over 2,000 characters. Centuries of Russian history are condensed and filtered through the life of the Hermitage, as the museum and its city simultaneously try to work out their identities. The film flings its audience, without precedent, into a palace of refinement and proceeds to traipse restlessly about with commensurate measures of joy and melancholy. Some emotions are aroused and much patience is tried, but one settles quickly into a trance. The film opens with the line, “I open my eyes and see nothing.” We, on the other hand, soon see everything. Such all-encompassing visibility is both Russian Ark’s genius and the leak in its hull.
Russian Ark is playing at Loews Cineplex Dupont, 1350 19th St., N.W.
