RUSSIAN ARK directed by Alexander Sokurov (Soviet Union, 2002)
Russian Ark is a historic film about history. It was filmed in the Winter Palace of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
What makes it unique is that it consists of a single tracking shot. Sound, and visual effects, were added in post-production but there are no edits in the 96 minute movie. It took four years to develop but the final preparation and filming had to be done within an extremely tight time schedule. The crew had only 36 hours to prepare the museum in readiness for the actual shooting which had to be completed in one day with only four hours of existing light.
A team of eight were involved in the shooting headed by German cinematographer Tilman Büttner and was made possible by recent advances in film technology. Without the relatively lightweight Steadicam, the equipment needed would have been too heavy and unwieldy to carry around for an hour and a half without a pause.
The floating narrative is built around a dialogue between an off-screen ghost/spy and a European; a 19th century French Marquis. We follow the diplomat (played by Sergei Dontsov) as he passes from room to room to give us a tour of the gallery and in the process he visits episodes from 300 years of Russian history. There are scenes with Peter The Great, Catherine The Great, Tsar Nicolas I & II and the film even brings us right up to date with a cameo role for the museum’s current director Mikhail Piotrovsky.
Solurov says: “I wanted to try and fit myself into the very flowing of time, without remaking it according to my wishes. I wanted to try and have a natural collaboration with time, to live that one and a half hours as if it were merely breathing in…and out. That was the ultimate, the sole artistic task”.
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