<
BACK
Long before it became a science and relegated to a computer
function, memory was an art. It was finely integrated with
literature, painting, sculpture, and primarily, architecture.
Medieval monks conceived of memory as spatial: chambers, doorways
and corridors, each architectural detail and visual element a hot
link for a memory. But these were not dusty spaces where old stories
were held in suspended animation, but living, breathing spaces where
thinking, meditation and remembrance occurred simultaneously — a
devotional stroll.
Filmmaker Alexander Sokurov, whose languorous, moody and
meditative films address the hungry human need for spirit, has
enacted the art of memory in a glorious way in Russian Ark.
Artistic heir to the late Andrei Tarkovski, Sokurov is known for
painterly cinematography and extremely long takes — a snooze for
most American multiplex-goers. Though he would rather animate
history than make it, his work on Russian Ark is a landmark
in filmmaking: it is a single, 90-minute take without one cut.
In homage to the great Hermitage museum, the former imperial
Winter Palace built in the 1700s in St. Petersburg, Sokurov wanted
to fill its grand halls and staircases with people; stage flashes of
Russian history in some of its 350 rooms; in effect, bow down before
the greatness of its architecture and the memories held in its
marble columns and sweeping galleries.
The film opens in darkness after a terrible unexplained accident.
The narrator, a man we never see though we see everything though his
eyes, is lost. He has arrived at the start of a large ball at the
Hermitage, and enters the building with soldiers and their ladies in
1800s dress. In the bowels of the building he meets a mysterious
stranger, a French Marquis (played by Sergei Dreiden), who is just
as lost as he is. The embodiment of a cynical, 1900s European
diplomat, he seems to be a time-traveler horrified to be in
"barbaric" Russia.
Together the narrator and the stranger wend through the hallways
and theaters and galleries of the Hermitage, encountering Peter the
Great, who built St. Petersburg out of a swamp 300 years ago this
year; Catherine the Great, being entertained by her private
orchestra and theater troupe; and later, a ceremony in which the
ambassador from Persia officially reconciles with Russia. The family
of Tsar Nicholas I, who resided at the palace, have their last meal
together in 1917; and in a terrible room, the Hermitage as it looked
during the World War II siege of the city in which one million
people died.
But this is not a history lesson for children. In between these
historical touchstones the stranger encounters great works of art,
filling gallery after gallery. Opulent dinner tables are prepared,
and people from different eras move across the camera's relentless
path, culminating in a fantastic ballroom scene in which 1000 extras
dance the mazurka to a live, full orchestra.
On December 23, 2001, after 9 months of preparation, the creation
of 13,000 costumes, the myriad rehearsals in rehearsal halls in St.
Petersburg, and the physical training of the cameraman, Russian
Ark was filmed in a single breathless sweep on Sony High
Definition video. It had never been fully rehearsed in situ. Tilman
Buttner, perhaps the finest Steadicam operator in the world (he shot
Run, Lola, Run), strapped a 77-pound camera setup to his back and
commenced his walk-through. They filmed without sound and added it
later, because Buttner would swear every time something went wrong,
and there were 22 assistant directors calling out cues for the close
to 2000 people involved. They only had one chance to do it; it would
have been impossible to set it up again in the four-hour window of
natural light that Sokurov wanted to use.
The result is a fluid ride in which rooms and hallways open and
fall away. The narrator and the cameraman are voyeurs in the
extreme, creeping up on people in private moments, examining the art
and china, hesitating at the entrance to certain rooms. Though the
focus is on the stranger, and we hear the nervous voice of the
narrator, the protagonist is the Hermitage itself, perhaps the first
time a museum has been a main character in a film.
Sokurov posits that Russian culture, though always considered
outside that of the rest of Europe, was just as refined; the film
insists upon it. At the end of the last half-hour, at the end of the
gala affair, the stranger is won over. He is so wooed by his
experience he never wants to leave. He who represents Europe, who
one person says smells of formaldehyde, would like to remain dancing
the mazurka with lovely ladies in white for the rest of time, a nice
bit of commentary by a director who says he's not interested in
politics. The actor's exhaustion is evident at the end; he is
luminous.
The narrator, however, knows the 20th century is coming, with its
great upheavals, its massive destruction, and terrible knowledge.
His discovery at the film's end is stunning, and its sustained last
half-hour is exaltation.