The prolific Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov has composed a cinematic love letter to the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg, the "ark" in which Russia's elite cultural identity has been preserved more or less inviolate from the calamities of the 20th century. 2003 San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards, Silver Condor Award for Best Foreign Film, "Interview: Achieving the Cinematic Impossible", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russian_Ark&oldid=975939428, Films shot from the first-person perspective, Articles containing Russian-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2017, Articles to be expanded from November 2016, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, The St. Petersburg Diary: Inauguration of a monument to Dostoevsky, The St. Petersburg Diary: Kosintsev's Flat, The St. Petersburg Diary: Mozart. The Marquis's family fortune came from a porcelain works, hence the European's interest in the Sèvres porcelain waiting for the diplomatic reception. The films lack of editing is very mystical in spurts. This is sort of an oddity - and sort of a miracle. If cinema is sometimes dreamlike, then every edit is an awakening. These include the UK, Japan, Korea, Argentina, and especially the US, where the film remains one of the most successful of both German and Russian movies of the last decades. [2], Russian Ark received high critical acclaim. The edit is what gives the film-maker the ability, in Tarkovsky's phrase, to sculpt time - and space too. In post-production the uncompressed HD 87-minute one-shot could be reworked in detail: besides many object removals, compositings, stabilisations, selective colour-corrections and digitally added focus changes, the whole film was continuously and dynamically reframed (resized) and for certain moments even timewarped (slowed down and sped up). After two more failed attempts, they were left with only enough battery power for one final take. It’s a perfectly executed work of art. Like the European, the Marquis' mother was friends with the Italian sculptor Canova and he himself was very religious. The long take/steadicam can be used to make stunning shots. The film was recorded entirely in the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum on 23 December 2001 using a one-take single 96-minute Steadicam sequence shot. "[4] Lighting directors of photography on the film were Bernd Fischer and Anatoli Radionov. You can unsubscribe at any time. It has its eccentricities and longueurs, undoubtedly, but even these add to its savour. Sokurov is hardly as well known here as he should be. Factual error: Peter the Great died 32 years before the construction of the Winter Palace had begun and 40 years before the construction of the original "Hermitage" gallery, built for Catherine the Great in 1765 by the French architect Vallin de la Mothe. This is high-wire movie-making. For Custine, Europe was "civilization" while Asia was "barbarism", and his placing of Russia as a part of Asia rather than Europe was meant to deny that Russians had any sort of civilization worthy of the name. Moloch, his superb film about Adolf Hitler, has never been released in the UK - baffling, as nazism is such good box office. But why do it in the first place? Russian Ark is a cinematic masterpiece. At the end of the day, though, I am lost with admiration for the cinematographer, who managed to keep his digital camera running and pointed in the right direction for 90 minutes without making a mistake. According to In One Breath, the documentary on the making of the film, four atte… Sokurov did, and he has conjured up a Midsummer Night's Dream of Russian history. Fortunately, the final take was a success and the film was completed at 90 minutes. So it's arguable if he would have been permitted even a second chance. [citation needed], Russian Ark is a German-Russian co-production. When the cast of thousands are finally gathered for a vast, valedictory procession down the main staircase, and the marquis moans: "Farewell Europe" - it is desperately sad. "Every time I did the take, or someone else made a mistake, I would curse, and that would have gotten in, so we did the sound later. Cinematographer Tilman Büttner had to carry a specially modified Steadicam capable of recording up to 100 minutes of high-definition video on to a hard disk. Could a British or American or French director have had the imagination and determination to achieve a similar costumed movie-staging in Buckingham Palace or the White House or Versailles? Everything unspools in one single, unbroken travelling shot, moving sinuously around the museum, roaming down corridors, nosing into chambers, peering up and down stairwells - encountering scenes from Russian history from the 17th to the early pre-Revolutionary 20th centuries: from Peter the Great to Nicholas. Echoing this sentiment, the film's European comments that Russia is a theater and that the people he meets are actors. At the end of the film, which depicts the last imperial ball in 1913, the European appears to accept Russia as a European nation. Russian ark ballroom scene, Hermitage, St Petersburg - YouTube If there had been a single mistake, if someone had fallen over or if a door was jammed - or if the camera had blundered across a mirror or reflective surface - then Sokurov and his army of actors would have had to go right back to first positions. Russian Ark is unique and record-breaking in its use of a 99-minute almost constantly moving tracking shot.