The Russian Ark

The experience of watching this film, THE RUSSIAN ARK, was a unique and exciting one.

I think it’s pretty pointless tackling the film without a fairly solid knowledge of the last three centuries of Russian history –it’s clear that Alexander Sokurov’s target audience is primarily well-educated Russians (specifically St Petersburgers) like himself, and anyone who doesn’t fit that description has to do some prior homework in order to get much out of the film. Even relatively well known aspects of Russian history like the last days of the Romanov dynasty aren’t signposted especially obviously.

As for the character of Custine, I got the impression that he was meant to be annoying – as one of the key themes of the film is the way Russia has long been straddling the Europe/Asia divide, and its pretensions to be seen as ‘European’ (expressed not least through the city of St Petersburg itself, which many Russians regard with suspicion because of its origins as an artificial creation through which Peter the Great wanted to cement cultural ties between Europe and Russia).

Accordingly, Russia cozies up to characters like Custine, only to be belittled and patronized in return – and that’s a microcosm of a fair chunk of Russian history in itself. I certainly get the impression that a fair number of Russian viewers would be asking “why are we wasting time with this guy?” – and, by extension, wondering why Russia is bothering with Europe when it’s quite capable of standing on its own feet.

But overall, I found the whole thing rather like a play. It’s very much like a stage production and I admire it for that. Everyone had one shot to get it right. They had to all get everything together and make it happen in the same take. Imagine the rehearsal for that. It is a beautiful film, though much of that beauty can be attributed to the Hermitage I guess. Anyway you shoot that place it will look great.

As for cinematography, script, plot, actors, lighting, sound, editing and a coherant score from a film…if you take those out of any film and you’re left with, not a film. Regardless, this film still has all of that…except for editing of course and I suppose a coherent score could be argued.