Dane Reighard

Post-Soviet Russian Cinema

Prof. Alyssa Gillespie

December 3, 2008

Review of Russian Ark

Too dry to be considered grand entertainment but too dishonest to be regarded as an educational document, Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark never transcends its daunting technical marvel: a single ninety-minute shot through the halls of the Hermitage and the annals of Russian history.

On a cinematic level, Sokurov’s one-shot stunt, which required painstakingly precise choreography of hundreds of actors and demanded that filming last only one day, significantly limited other artistic choices a director must consider. Lighting throughout is hardly evocative; the museum is lit like a museum. Staircases are appropriately shadowy, and ballrooms are bright, but these setups are merely serviceable and offer no hints of subtext that master cinematographers bring to their work. More baffling is the filmmaker’s decision to include lingering shots of some of the Hermitage’s paintings. A director visually ambitious enough to shoot his film in one shot should be aware of the visual banality of these masterpieces being viewed by audiences on television sets and even laptops. The genius of the paintings lie in their details, most of which are unnoticeable when projected through other mediums. For this reason, the scene in which the Marquis and two gentlemen are scrutinizing “The Birth of John the Baptist” feels like it is part of a documentary on public broadcasting rather than part of a groundbreaking work of cinema.

One small flourish is present, however, on multiple occasions. Upon entering a few of the museum’s larger halls, Sokurov utilizes Alfred Hitchcock’s famous Psycho trick in which the camera zooms out as it is tracking forward, thus creating a feeling of imbalance that may signify the transition between present-day and the past in this instance. Hitchcock also employed lengthy shots in his films, most notably Rope, which consists of eight ten-minute shots edited together to look like one. But while Hitchcock’s shots were designed to create a feeling of unbearable, slow-burning tension, Sokurov’s seems designed solely to elevate an otherwise forgettable film to the forefront of world cinema.

As an overview of its nation’s history, Russian Ark also disappoints due to Sokurov’s glaring redactions. His central metaphor of the Hermitage, or Russia on a larger scale, as an ark that absorbs and preserves the rich culture of its foreign influences is half-baked. Russia’s complex history with Asia is completely ignored. The museum boasts over 180,000 pieces of Oriental art, but not a single reference to these is made. If Russia as a society is in a constant struggle to establish a unique identity while being wedged between Europe and Asia, then disregarding a crucial piece of the puzzle not only deprives foreign audiences of an honest portrayal of Russia, but also brings Russia itself no closer to finding any answers. Furthermore, Sokurov seems almost entirely uninterested in placing the monumentally important events of the twentieth century into a larger context. The dark warehouse full of empty frames apparently is meant to represent World War II and its ensuing events, so it seems that the director is telling us that the tumultuous last century is hidden behind closed doors in his mind and should remain that way.