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Russian Ark review
:. Director: Aleksandr Sokurov
:. Starring: Sergei Dontsov, Mariya Kuznetsova
Running Time: 1:36
Country: Russia/Germany
Year: 2003
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Art and history cross and merge openly during this inter-temporal and surrealist guided visit that Aleksandr Sokurov has invited us to attend.
Following the steps of officers in full uniform and young women in ball gowns, Sokurov's camera rushes into the Russian Arc, an imperial palace converted into a museum, randomly walking us through the halls, from the backstage of a theater to a luxurious salon, defying both the borders of space and time as well as cinematic conventions. Weightless travel through the centuries, Russian Ark makes us brush against the walls, skim over these baroque paintings, caress the statues and discreetly inch our way through the crowd of nobles, princes, soldiers and other art lovers. One passes from one room to another and one epoch to another guided by the most malicious of guides, the Marquis de Custine (Sergei Dreiden), a French writer and diplomat, an anachronistic tourist when the fancy takes him.
If the palace is henceforth only inhabited by paintings and statues of the epoch, its walls seem to have absorbed past moments in order for us to restore them, making this Ark not only an art museum, a cultural enclave, but above all a museum of memory. For Sokurov, the value of the work is well beyond its artistic aspect since it also functions as a historical testimony of the past. While the contemporary visitors contemplate these paintings from an aesthetic point of view, the marquis looks at them through his own eye, putting them in their historical context. This assimilation of art to history is found in both main characters. This mysterious character, whose gaze the camera borrows, (Sokurov, personifying the role of the director as the eye of the audience) channels artistic expression while the marquis, an anecdotal figure, symbolizes History.
Often passing by unperceived but sometimes approached , our two protagonists are to some extent ghosts who travel in time, stray and curious souls, timeless tourists. The movements of the camera floating with impunity through the rooms confirms this idea, but the use of the first person objective also puts us under the skin of a voyeur.
Paradoxically, Sokurov's film functions like a true-false historical documentary, succeeding Spinal Tap, 24 Hour Party People and Timecode in other genres. Another common point with Mike Figgis's film, Russian Ark was filmed in only one take, each moment linked with grace and precision, making the director a true orchestra conductor. A long-standing aesthetic and experimental filmmaker, this collaborator and protégé of Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris) entrusted the cinematography to Tilman Büttner (Run Lola Run), whose dexterity in handling the steadycam accompanies Sokurov's more cerebral process with style and flexibility.
Stripped of any narrative artifice, the film fascinates with its beauty and simplicity, combining innovation and perfection to join the very closed circle of films that can be qualified as masterpieces.
Fred Thom
 Movie Reviews: Foreign Films
Reviews 2012 - present
Reviews 1998 - 2012
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