November 20, 2012 (XXV:12 Aleksandr Sokurov, RUSSIAN ARK ...

unmistakeably Viscontian in its elegiac quality.
The relationship between Custine and the narrator is one
whose dynamic shifts as regularly as the film’s diegesis shifts in
space and time. The Marquis is first presented almost as a Nosferatulike
figure emerging from the shadows. Wiry, pallid, hunched and
clad in black with sprigs of grey hair he becomes an irascible, laconic
guide to the treasures of the Hermitage. His teacherly status is
abruptly reversed when he arrives at a cold, colourless salon, filled
with dust and empty frames – we are now in the time of World War
II. A bewildered Marquis is warned by the narrator not to enter but he
does so nonetheless, encountering a museum worker in a room
depicting the hardship imposed on the Russian people and its culture
during the siege of Leningrad.
Tim Harte has observed that Custine “has gotten a stark
glimpse of the mortality
that contrasts with the
film’s earlier evocations
of the eternal within the
ubiquitous ‘living’
frames featured
elsewhere in the
museum.” It is the
narrator now who has to
provide a history lesson
for the Marquis. Apart
from this wartime
segment, it is interesting
to note that there almost
nothing in the film on
the Soviet era, with no
mention of figures such
as Lenin or Stalin.
Somewhat
predictably for a film
whose visuals are so
spectacular, the film’s sound design has been largely neglected in
critical writings. There can surely be little doubt that the meticulous
visual choreography is also matched by the aural. After the opening
titles, and before a fade-in allows the camera to begin its flight,
Sokurov introduces his narrator in complete darkness, with gusts of
wind whistling on the soundtrack. The director’s own delivery is akin
to that of one who has awoken from deep sleep in a state of
bewilderment: “Where am I? Where are they rushing to? Has this all
been staged for me? Am I expected to play a role?” If we return to the
motif of the child, this emergence from darkness is of course akin to
birth.
As the camera progresses through the Hermitage, the
soundtrack is peppered by whispers, chatter and hushed laughter from
a plethora of characters. But constant throughout the film is an
audible breathing – presumably of the narrator – symbolic of a culture
that is living, a culture “destined to sail forever”.
Harry Sheehan in LA Weekly, Jan 10-16, 2003, “Russian Ark”:
Writer-director Alexander (née Aleksandr) Sokurov — a perennial
presence at major film festivals with such recent work as Taurus
(2000), Moloch (1999) and, earlier and much more satisfactorily,
Mother and Son (1996) — is on the whole more respected than
beloved. Before attending film school, the now-51-year-old country
boy – turned – St. Petersburger got his university degree in history,
Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—4
and has looked there for his subject matter ever since. Only it's not
just history, to hear his admirers tell it: On Sokurov's own official
Web site, one Russian critic describes the filmmaker's subject as
"man and his fate" — surely a daunting ambition for anyone's
lifework, and one that has led to accusations of grandiosity.
Certainly, only an artist with an inflated sense of mission could
conceive of his work as a kind of biblical ark for 300 years of modern
Russian history. Russian Ark opens with a black screen and the voice
of an unnamed filmmaker (Sokurov's, actually) explaining that he's
just regaining consciousness after some mysterious "accident" —
perhaps, the viewer may come to believe, the historical "anomaly" of
Russian communism. When the black gives way to a clear image,
we're in a back courtyard of the Hermitage museum complex (of
which Peter the Great's Winter Palace is the oldest building) amid
officers and ladies,
dressed in 18thcentury
finery, as they
make their way to a
party inside. The
camera/unseen
filmmaker scurries
along with them and
soon meets up with
the figure who will be
our companion and
guide, a 19th-century
French diplomat
known only as the
Marquis (Sergey
Dreiden) — a man of
exquisite taste, and at
the same time a
familiar Russian
punching bag, the
Western dilettante
blind to the depths of the aggrieved Russian soul.
With the Marquis' appearance, the film settles into its formal
structure, a journey through the Hermitage as art museum and living
historical presence. Working with German cinematographer Tilman
Büttner, who was the Steadicam operator on Tom Tykwer's Run Lola
Run, Sokurov shot all of Russian Ark as one continuous take. To
accomplish this, he employed a high-definition video camera that
stored its images on a specially developed portable hard drive that
could record up to 100 minutes of uncompressed images. (The video
image was eventually transferred to 35mm film.) As the camera
makes its way through the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, the
"ark" of the title, it weaves in and out of time periods, assessing
canvases and sculptures, glimpsing small vignettes and vast scenes.
To make sure that our eyes don't get bored, the camera moves up,
down and all around, compensating for the absence of editing by
continually reframing the action.
But clearly, something more serious than stylistic innovation is
afoot here — something too serious, Sokurov must have felt, for mere
drama. Russian Ark doesn't act so much as it muses: on art, on
history, on Russia versus the West, on politics. The first long segment
of the tour touches upon the creation of the Winter Palace by Peter
the Great (Maxim Sergeyev), whom we spy in a small room, dressed
in one of his favored peasant costumes, thrashing a general
presumptuous enough to have made advances to a princess. This