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''Russian Ark'' (russian: link=no, Русский ковчег, ''Russkij Kovcheg'') is a 2002
experimental An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a ...
historical drama A historical drama (also period drama, costume drama, and period piece) is a work set in a past time period, usually used in the context of film and television. Historical drama includes historical fiction and romances, adventure films, and s ...
film directed by
Alexander Sokurov Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov, PAR (russian: link=no, Александр Николаевич Сокуров; born 14 June 1951) is a Russian filmmaker. His most significant works include a feature film, ''Russian Ark'' (2002), filmed in a s ...
. In ''Russian Ark'', an unnamed narrator wanders through the
Winter Palace The Winter Palace ( rus, Зимний дворец, Zimnij dvorets, p=ˈzʲimnʲɪj dvɐˈrʲɛts) is a palace in Saint Petersburg that served as the official residence of the Russian Emperor from 1732 to 1917. The palace and its precincts now ...
in
Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
, and implies that he died in some horrible accident and is a ghost drifting through the palace. In each room, he encounters various real and fictional people from various periods in the city's 300-year history. He is accompanied by "the European", who represents the Marquis de Custine, a 19th-century French traveler. The film was recorded entirely in the
Winter Palace The Winter Palace ( rus, Зимний дворец, Zimnij dvorets, p=ˈzʲimnʲɪj dvɐˈrʲɛts) is a palace in Saint Petersburg that served as the official residence of the Russian Emperor from 1732 to 1917. The palace and its precincts now ...
of the Russian State
Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the larges ...
on 23 December 2001 using a one-take single 96-minute
Steadicam Steadicam is a brand of camera stabilizer mounts for motion picture cameras invented by Garrett Brown and introduced in 1975 by Cinema Products Corporation. It was designed to isolate the camera from the camera operator's movement, keeping th ...
sequence shot. ''Russian Ark'' uses the
fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...
device extensively, but repeatedly broken and re-erected. At times the narrator and the companion interact with the other performers, whilst at other times they pass unnoticed. The film was entered into the
2002 Cannes Film Festival The 55th Cannes Film Festival started on 15 May and ran until 26 May 2002. The Palme d'Or went to the Polish-French-German-British co-produced film '' The Pianist'' directed by Roman Polanski. The festival opened with '' Hollywood Ending'', direct ...
. ''Russian Ark'' is widely regarded as one of the greatest Russian movies of all time.


Plot

On a winter's day, a small party of men and women arrive by horse-drawn carriage to a minor, side entrance of the Winter Palace, dressed in the style of the early 19th century to attend a ball hosted by the Emperor Alexander I. The narrator (whose point of view is always in first-person) meets another spectral but visible outsider, "the European", and follows him through numerous rooms of the palace. "The European", a 19th-century French diplomat who appears to be the Marquis de Custine, has nothing but contempt for Russians; he tells the narrator that they are unable to create or appreciate beauty as Europeans do, as demonstrated by the European treasures around him. Each room manifests a different period of Russian history, although the periods are not in chronological order. Featured are
Peter the Great Peter I ( – ), most commonly known as Peter the Great,) or Pyotr Alekséyevich ( rus, Пётр Алексе́евич, p=ˈpʲɵtr ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ, , group=pron was a Russian monarch who ruled the Tsardom of Russia from t ...
harassing and striking one of his generals; a spectacular presentation of operas and plays in the era of
Catherine the Great , en, Catherine Alexeievna Romanova, link=yes , house = , father = Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst , mother = Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp , birth_date = , birth_name = Princess Sophie of Anha ...
; an imperial audience in which
Tsar Nicholas I , house = Romanov-Holstein-Gottorp , father = Paul I of Russia , mother = Maria Feodorovna (Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg) , birth_date = , birth_place = Gatchina Palace, Gatchina, Russian Empire , death_date = ...
is offered a formal apology by the Shah of Iran, represented by his grandson
Khosrow Mirza Prince Khosrow Mirza Qajar (; 1813 – 21 October 1875) was the seventh son of Abbas Mirza and grandson of Fath-Ali Shah, King of Iran. Khosrow Mirza is best known for his "Apology Mission" to the Russian Empire after the murder of Alexander Gri ...
, for the death of ambassador
Alexander Griboyedov Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov (russian: Александр Сергеевич Грибоедов, ''Aleksandr Sergeevich Griboedov'' or ''Sergeevich Griboyedov''; 15 January 179511 February 1829), formerly romanized as Alexander Sergueevich Gr ...
in 1829; the idyllic family life of
Tsar Nicholas II Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov; spelled in pre-revolutionary script. ( 186817 July 1918), known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer,. was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Polan ...
's children; the ceremonial changing of the various regiments of the Imperial Guard; people touring the palace in the present; the museum's director whispering the need to make repairs during the rule of
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
; and a desperate
Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
er making his own coffin during the 900-day siege of the city during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. A grand ball follows, held in the Nicholas Hall, with many of the participants in spectacular period costume and a full orchestra conducted by
Valery Gergiev Valery Abisalovich Gergiev (russian: Вале́рий Абиса́лович Ге́ргиев, ; os, Гергиты Абисалы фырт Валери, Gergity Abisaly fyrt Valeri; born 2 May 1953) is a Russian conductor and opera company d ...
featuring music by
Mikhail Glinka Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka ( rus, link=no, Михаил Иванович Глинка, Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka., mʲɪxɐˈil ɪˈvanəvʲɪdʑ ˈɡlʲinkə, Ru-Mikhail-Ivanovich-Glinka.ogg; ) was the first Russian composer to gain wide recogni ...
, then a long final exit with a crowd down the grand staircase. The European tells the narrator that he belongs here, in the world of
1913 Events January * January 5 – First Balkan War: Battle of Lemnos – Greek admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis forces the Turkish fleet to retreat to its base within the Dardanelles, from which it will not venture for the rest of the ...
where everything is still beautiful and elegant, and does not want to go any further. The narrator then walks backwards out the hallway and sees many people from different time periods exiting the building together. As he watches them, the narrator quietly departs the procession, leaves the building through a side door and looks out upon the
River Neva The Neva (russian: Нева́, ) is a river in northwestern Russia flowing from Lake Ladoga through the western part of Leningrad Oblast (historical region of Ingria) to the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland. Despite its modest length of , it i ...
.


Cast

*
Alexander Sokurov Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov, PAR (russian: link=no, Александр Николаевич Сокуров; born 14 June 1951) is a Russian filmmaker. His most significant works include a feature film, ''Russian Ark'' (2002), filmed in a s ...
as Narrator * Sergei Dontsov (
Sergey Dreyden Sergey Simonovich Dreyden (Dontsov) (russian: Серге́й Си́монович Дре́йден (Донцо́в); born 14 September 1941) is a Russian actor and star of Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark. Life He was born in Novosibirsk to th ...
) as the European ( Marquis de Custine) * Mariya Kuznetsova as
Catherine the Great , en, Catherine Alexeievna Romanova, link=yes , house = , father = Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst , mother = Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp , birth_date = , birth_name = Princess Sophie of Anha ...
* Marksim Sergeyev as
Peter the Great Peter I ( – ), most commonly known as Peter the Great,) or Pyotr Alekséyevich ( rus, Пётр Алексе́евич, p=ˈpʲɵtr ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ, , group=pron was a Russian monarch who ruled the Tsardom of Russia from t ...
* Anna Aleksakhina as Alexandra Feodorovna * Vladimir Baranov as
Nicholas II Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov; spelled in pre-revolutionary script. ( 186817 July 1918), known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer,. was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Pol ...


Production

The film displays 33 rooms of the museum, which are filled with a cast of over 2,000 actors and three orchestras. ''Russian Ark'' was recorded in uncompressed
high-definition video High-definition video (HD video) is video of higher resolution and quality than standard-definition. While there is no standardized meaning for ''high-definition'', generally any video image with considerably more than 480 vertical scan lines ...
using a Sony HDW-F900 camera. The information was not recorded compressed to tape as usual, but uncompressed onto a hard disk which could hold 100 minutes which was carried behind the cameraman as he traveled from room to room, scene to scene. According to ''In One Breath: Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark'', the documentary on the making of the film, four attempts were made. The first failed at the five-minute mark. After two more failed attempts, they were left with only enough battery power for one final take. The four hours of daylight available were also nearly gone. Fortunately, the final take was a success and the film was completed at 90 minutes. Tilman Büttner, the director of photography and
Steadicam Steadicam is a brand of camera stabilizer mounts for motion picture cameras invented by Garrett Brown and introduced in 1975 by Cinema Products Corporation. It was designed to isolate the camera from the camera operator's movement, keeping th ...
operator, executed the shot on 23 December 2001. In a 2002 interview, Büttner said that film sound was recorded separately. "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." Lighting directors of photography on the film were Bernd Fischer and Anatoli Radionov. The director later rejected Büttner's nomination for a European Film Academy award, believing that only the whole film should gain an award.


Post-production

In post-production the uncompressed HD 87-minute
one-shot One shot may refer to: Film and television * One-shot film, a feature film shot in one long take with no edits, or manufactured to look like so * ''One Shot'' (2005 film), a Sri Lankan action film directed by Ranjan Ramanayake * ''One Shot'' (2 ...
could be reworked in detail: besides many object removals (mainly cables and other film equipment), compositings (e.g. additional snow or fog), stabilisations, selective colour-corrections and digitally added focus changes, the whole film was continuously and dynamically reframed (resized) and for certain moments even time-warped (slowed down and sped up). This work took several weeks and was mainly executed by editor Patrick Wilfert under supervision of lead editor Sergei Ivanov on
Discreet Logic Autodesk Media and Entertainment is a division of Autodesk which offers animation and visual effects products, and was formed by the combination of multiple acquisitions. In 2018, the company began operating as a single operating segment and repo ...
's Inferno system. Avoiding any playouts and using framestore to framestore transfers only, the picture was left uncompressed, before being reprinted onto filmstock for theatrical distribution.


Background

The narrator's guide, "the European", is based on the book by the French aristocrat Marquis de Custine, who visited Russia in 1839 and wrote ''La Russie en 1839'', in which he depicted Russia in extremely unflattering terms. A few biographical elements from Custine's life are shown in the film. Like the European, the Marquis' mother was friends with the Italian sculptor
Canova Antonio Canova (; 1 November 1757 – 13 October 1822) was an Italian Neoclassical sculptor, famous for his marble sculptures. Often regarded as the greatest of the Neoclassical artists,. his sculpture was inspired by the Baroque and the cl ...
and he himself was very religious. Custine's book mocks Russian civilization as a thin veneer of Europe on an Asiatic soul. 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. Echoing this sentiment, the film's European comments that Russia is a theater and that the people he meets are actors. The Marquis's family fortune came from a porcelain works, hence the European's interest in the
Sèvres Sèvres (, ) is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris, in the Hauts-de-Seine department, Île-de-France region. The commune, which had a population of 23,251 as of 2018, is known for ...
porcelain waiting for the diplomatic reception. At the end of the film, which depicts the last imperial ball in 1913, the European appears to accept Russia as a European nation. ''In One Breath'', a documentary about the making of ''Russian Ark'', written and directed by Knut Elstermann, gives more insight into the single long shot tracking techniques and formidable organization behind the making of the film.


Reception


Box office

The film was not a huge commercial success, though as an arthouse film it performed strongly in many territories. 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 recent decades. ''Russian Ark'' is a German-Russian co-production. The film grossed $3,048,997 in the United States and Canada, with $5,641,171 internationally, for a worldwide total of $8,690,168.


Critical response

''Russian Ark'' received high critical acclaim.
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
wrote, "Apart from anything else, this is one of the best-sustained ideas I have ever seen on the screen.... e effect of the unbroken flow of images (experimented with in the past by directors like Hitchcock and
Max Ophüls Maximillian Oppenheimer (; 6 May 1902 – 26 March 1957), known as Max Ophüls (; ), was a German-French film director who worked in Germany (1931–1933), France (1933–1940 and 1950–1957), and the United States (1947–1950). He made near ...
) is uncanny. If cinema is sometimes dreamlike, then every edit is an awakening. ''Russian Ark'' spins a daydream made of centuries."
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...
reported that 89% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 109 reviews, with an average rating of 7.90/10. The consensus review summary reads, "As successful as it is ambitious, ''Russian Ark'' condenses three centuries of Russian history into a single, uninterrupted, 87-minute take." On
Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, which uses an average of critics' reviews, the film has an 86/100 rating based on 32 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". ''
Slant Magazine ''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New Yo ...
'' ranked the film 84th in its list of the best films of the 2000s. In a critics' and readers' poll by ''
Empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...
'' magazine, it was voted the 358th greatest film of all time.


Awards

''Russian Ark'' received the Visions Award at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival, a Special Citation at the 2003 San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards and the 2004 Silver Condor Award for Best Foreign Film from the
Argentine Film Critics Association The Argentine Film Critics Association ( es, Asociación de Cronistas Cinematográficos de la Argentina) is an organization of Argentine-based journalists and correspondents. The association presents the ''Silver Condor Awards'' (''Premios Cóndor ...
; it was also nominated for the
Palme d'Or The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...
at the
2002 Cannes Film Festival The 55th Cannes Film Festival started on 15 May and ran until 26 May 2002. The Palme d'Or went to the Polish-French-German-British co-produced film '' The Pianist'' directed by Roman Polanski. The festival opened with '' Hollywood Ending'', direct ...
, the Golden Hugo at the 2002
Chicago International Film Festival The Chicago International Film Festival is an annual film festival held every fall. Founded in 1964 by Michael Kutza, it is the longest-running competitive film festival in North America. Its logo is a stark, black and white close up of the comp ...
and the 2004 Nika Award for Best Film. In addition, Alexander Sokurov was named Best Director at Fancine in 2003 and was nominated for the 2002
European Film Award for Best Director The European Film Award for Best Director is an award given out at the annual European Film Awards to recognize a director who has exhibited outstanding directing while working in a film industry. The award is presented by the European Film Acade ...
. Cinematographer Tilman Büttner was also nominated for various awards for his work on the film, including a European Film Award and a German Camera Award.


References


External links

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Russian Ark 2000s avant-garde and experimental films 2002 fantasy films 2000s historical films 2002 films 2002 drama films 2000s ghost films Films set in 1829 Films set in 1913 Cultural depictions of Catherine the Great Cultural depictions of Nicholas II of Russia Cultural depictions of Peter the Great Cultural depictions of Nicholas I of Russia Films directed by Alexander Sokurov Films set in museums Films set in Saint Petersburg Films set in the Russian Empire Films shot from the first-person perspective German historical drama films Historical fantasy films One-shot films 2000s Persian-language films Russian detective films Russian fantasy drama films Russian historical drama films 2000s Russian-language films Canadian historical drama films Finnish historical drama films German mystery drama films Canadian mystery drama films 2002 multilingual films German multilingual films Russian multilingual films Canadian multilingual films Finnish multilingual films 2000s Canadian films 2000s German films