The shot seen ’round the world

Forget the kilometre-long queues for The Matrix Reloaded. Forget the 13 big-budget, lunchbox-shifting sequels expected to hit your screens between now and October, because for true cinephiles Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark is the only game in town.

As cinematic events go, this exceptional film is the only release this summer worthy of the name, and the film’s logistics alone have reduced the most hardened critics to outpourings of gibbering hyperbole. It’s not difficult to see why. The entire movie is composed of a single take, of ninety minutes’ duration – but where similar cinematic experiments such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, have yielded claustrophobic effects, Sokurov’s film uses the constraints of its formula to paradoxically liberating effect.

Indeed, Russian Ark utilises the full scope of its medium – a medium which generally inhabits only the present tense – to cross four centuries of Russian history and culture, as witnessed by the ghosts which inhabit the famous Hermitage Museum of St. Petersberg.

“We enter the Hermitage through the eye of the camera”, explains Sorukov. “We encounter Peter The Great, and Catherine, and we get caught up in the whirl of a glamourous ball, and attend a reception of foreign ambassadors given by Nicholas The First. We meet the academic Orbelly and Piotrovsky the Elder (former director of the Hermitage), see the palace during the Siege of Leningrad, and commune with Rembrandt through his paintings. In that way, the film encompasses history, politics, fine art, music and dancing.”

It’s the single shot design which lends cohesion to the film’s majestic sweep, but it’s a form which has fascinated Sokurov for a considerable period.

“Cinema art has developed as the art of the montage” says the award winning director. “So it’s actually the art of cutting – the art of the knife. However many filmmakers, such as Alexander Dovzhenko, were seeking continuity. About fifteen years ago, I was thinking over every detail of a movie which could be a one-shot, but there were no technical possibilities allowing me to make such a work at that time. Digital cameras have given me the chance, but I’m not a theoretician, I’ve no desire to uncover anything new. This idea of the long unbroken shot has existed for years. It’s just that in my professional world much of the art has been forgotten, and therefore my film is seen as radical.”

As impressive as the film is in formal terms, its primary aim in ‘reconfiguring time and space’ was as a celebration of the Hermitage. As the film’s title suggests, the museum literally functions as an ‘ark’, and like its biblical antecedent, it has preserved Russia’s history, while weathering all manner of storms.

As such, in recreating the events which took place in the one-time palace, Sokurov is engaging with the history and nature of Russia itself, though he was determined to portray the past as a living breathing entity. Hence, the film does not adhere to chronology, and as the camera proceeds through 35 rooms, it is impossible to determine where this expansive, Pynchonesque project will take you.

“The action takes place in different times,” Sokurov outlines. “The time of Peter The Great, and Catherine The Great and Nicholas I and II. For me, none of those times has ever stopped or ended. Historical time cannot depart, cannot collapse. An unknown foreigner, born in the nineteenth century, who has visited Russia is our guide, while a contemporary figure is the film’s author. Both find themselves moving through a labyrinth. The Labyrinth is the Hermitage, the only place in Russia where such a thing exists, for there is no other such artistic and vivid labyrinth.”

Of course, in a project this vast, with no possibility for re-takes if something were to go wrong, compromises had to be made.

“Even having spent a huge amount of funds and time on the image, we still only accomplished a third of the planned artistic tasks,” Sokurov claims. “We had to add the soundtrack after shooting of course, as we were not able to record sound during the shoot as commands and remarks would be heard. We were re-recording the soundtrack in Germany, not for technical reasons, but political ones – and that was awkward. Also there were 4,000 people in my original draft, but for safety and economic reasons that was reduced to 1,000.”

Still, the spectacular and sublime results achieved, mean that Sokurov has no regrets about such artistic sacrifices.

“It was not the customary way of making a film, but how tempting it was – like leaping off a 20-metre tower as an act of faith. You just take a deep breath and step into space, believing but not really knowing if you are going to survive.”