Cast: Sergei Dreiden

Director: Alexander Sokurov

Screenplay: Alexander Sokurov

Running time: 1 hr 36 mins

Genre: Drama/Fantasy/History



CRITIQUE:


Russian Ark boasts a tagline: 2,000 casts, 3 orchestras, 33 rooms, 300 years of history – all in one take. So very rarely does a film go down to history records. Alexander Sokurov’s behemoth of a magnum opus is presently the world’s longest one-take in the annals of cinema. Clocking around 96 minutes, the digital Steadicam roves around the majestic Hermitage museum in fluid motions, narrated by an unseen filmmaker and guided by a cynical, black-tongued 19th century French diplomat, as the past and the present collide with each other in this contemplative, elegant, celebrative, and often sombre exploration into the Russian history. It’s madly ambitious, wildly audacious and utterly dreamlike, as the camera glides from one room to the other, figures of the Russian past like Catherine and Peter the Great take life-form and hundreds of gorgeously costumed people from different periods. It puts audience almost in a trance, like an ethereal tour around the museum, struck by its sheer beauty. There are scenes of folly, little known characters slide in and out of focus – but it’s really Sokurov’s contemporary filmmaking that should be celebrated here. And we ask ourselves what’s the purpose of such drudgery? Have a look at the film’s inspired ending, a hopeful, melancholic look into a frosty sea. The Hermitage is the ark, and together along with the history, artefacts, the arts and its craftsmen would navigate the waters of time through eternity. This is without a doubt a staggering piece of work.


VERDICT:

Magisterial. Sumptuous. Extraordinary. You will never see anything like this. Russian Ark is a film of such incredible achievement.



RATING: A