Russian Ark Review Thomas Green DM-270 Russian Ark is a 2002 film by Russian director Alexander Sokurov. Sokurov’s film is an hour and half time based piece that jumps to different eras of Russian history. The film is shot inside the Hermitage Museum which provides fabulous imagery complete with lavish gold finials and light fixtures, marble staircases, floors and archways. The museum is equipped with a multitude of abysmal hallways that provide a great the opportunity for the film to run without encountering the same room twice. The film starts in what seems to be ancient times. We see gold chariots and characters that appear like they were stolen from a Grecian urn. The camera passes over a short railing and dips downward to reveal a symphony. Then we are introduced to an audience area where Catherine the great observes the characters. It appears that the characters of ancient Greece were acting a scene from a play. She approves of the play and scumbles off to pee. The camera seamlessly follows her up the stairs and into a room where she gleams out onto the streets in the middle of winter. The camera continues down the hall and enters into a gallery. The main character, the Marquis, seems to be carrying on a conversation with the character whose point of view the whole movie is shot. As they enter the hallway, a discussion starts about the artwork. This discussion pops up several times during the film. Comments are made that it (the Hermitage) looks like the Vatican. The Marquis comments “This is Petersburg, better than the Vatican.” The Marquis recalls a time 111 years ago when different paintings hung in this grand gallery. It suggests to the viewer that we are traveling in time. The whole film is just one absolutely mesmerizing camera shot that can’t really be described. With there being so many takes on a general film set even for one short scene, it’s astonishing to try and fathom how this picture was made and in just one continuous shot. I think the odds of lightening striking the same place are better than this film going off right. The only thing similar I can recall seeing is a television episode of ER that was done LIVE. Even then, with all the orchestration of characters, there were several cameras that shot the hour of TV drama. Mr. Sokurov is a very gutsy man to even think of attempting it. At one point, the camera leaves the building out into the snow. It somehow flows seamlessly (and quickly) through the terrain to meet the Marquis at a perpendicular doorway from a courtyard area. Towards the finally, there are hundreds of characters dancing in the midst of a grand ballroom. The camera seems to flow with the dancers as they waltz. It moves in and out and it swirls around and seems to mingle with people in its own narrative as it glides throughout this film. I think I can honestly say, if it isn’t Downton Abbey, I’m usually not interested in historical accounts of fancy people in fancy places doing fancy things. If it were just an ordinary film about that, I really wouldn’t have been so captivated to watch. But, the film was able to carry me based solely on the idea of how the filmmakers were getting the shot, the complexity of keeping the actors organized. What an orchestration! It’s hard to get 5 people out of an elevator together without the door starting to close, and so, I can’t imagine how you could get 300 people clad in tightly sewn Victorian bodices and tuxedos with long tail-coats to dance and move together and move in unison out of that grand ballroom down a flight of stairs and into a large clerestory lined hall. Wow, nice finally. My first initial thought is that the camera is places on a fixed tripod with caster (wheels) positioned to the base of each leg. This would explain the fluid motion as the camera pivots, heads through doorways, and glides freely down hallways. But this would be far too easy. The camera seems smooth regardless of what it is doing. And it tends to be doing a lot of different things that would not be allowed if it were fixed to just a tripod. During a segment at the dance, when the orchestra is being featured, the camera seemed to magically rise up (smoothly) about 5 feet while it was also moving in a lateral direction simultaneously. Part of me thinks also that it could have been attached to some sort of cable and that is how it went up into the air like that. Or maybe, there were some hydraulic lifts in the tripod that assisted in elevating the camera. After the camera hovers a while over the orchestra while the it descends again into it’s original position at about 5 feet off the ground. This motion is also unexplainable. During several segments, one in the hallway with children running and the other as the great multitude descends the stairs, the camera moves really quickly, much faster than a standard human walk. The biggest mystery of all seems to be in the stairwell. If the camera is on wheels, how does it navigate the stairs so smoothly? I’m thinking that as it reaches the edge of the stairs, I liked the film. I’m not sure the subject matter has great interest, and I’m sure that I caught the reference to all the various characters historically. But, it was a stunning “you gotta see this” kind of experience. I can only imagine months and months of planning and rehearsals in order to pull this all off in one fell swoop. Amazing.