November 20, 2012 (XXV:12 Aleksandr Sokurov, (2002, 99 min)

Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov Written by Boris Khaimsky, Anatoli Nikiforov, Svetlana Proskurina and Aleksandr Sokurov Produced by Andrey Deryabin and Jens Meurer Original Music by Sergei Yevtushenko Cinematography by Tilman Büttner Film Editing by Stefan Ciupek, Sergey Ivanov, Betina Kuntzsch

Sergei Dontsov…The Stranger (The Marquis de Custine) Mariya Kuznetsova… Leonid Mozgovoy…The Spy …Himself (Hermitage Director) David Giorgobiani…Orbeli Aleksandr Chaban… Boris Piotrovsky Lev Yeliseyev…Himself Boris Smolkin…Chancellor Nesselrode Oleg Khmelnitsky…Himself Yuri Khomutyansky…Insane Italian Alla Osipenko…Herself …Conductor Artyom Strelnikov…Talented Boy The State Hermitage Orchestra…Orchestra Tamara Kurenkova…Herself (Blind Woman) Aleksandr Sokurov…The Time Traveller (voice) Maksim Sergeyev… Natalya Nikulenko…Catherine the Great ALEKSANDR SOKUROV (b. Aleksandr Nikolaevich Sokurov, June 14, Yelena Rufanova…First Lady 1951, Podorvikha, Irkutskaya oblast, RSFSR, USSR [now ]) Yelena Spiridonova…Second Lady has 58 directing credits, about half of them documentaries. Some of Konstantin Anisimov…First Cavalier his films are 2011Faust, 2010 Intonatsiya. Vladimir Yakunin, 2007 Aleksey Barabash…Second Cavalier Alexandra, 2006 Elegiya zhizni. Rostropovich. Vishnevskaya., 2005 Ilya Shakunov…Third Cavalier The Sun, 2004 “The Diary of St. Petersburg: Mozart. Requiem”, 2003 Anna Aleksakhina…Alexandra Fyodorovna, Wife of Nicholas II Father and Son, 2002 Russian Ark, 2001 Elegy of a Voyage, 2001 Vladimir Baranov…Nicholas II Taurus, 2000 Dolce..., 2000 The Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn, 1999 Valentin Bukin…Military Official Moloch, 1997 A Humble Life, 1997 Mother and Son, 1994 Svetlana Gaytan…Museum Custodian Whispering Pages, 1992 Kamen, 1990 , 1990 Vadim Gushchin…Grandee of Catherine The Great Madame Bovary, 1989 The Lonely Voice of Man, 1988 Days of Kirill Dateshidze…Master of Ceremonies Eclipse, 1987 Mournful Unconcern, 1980 (short), 1979 Mikhail Dorofeyev…First Card Player Posledni den' nenastnogo leta (short), 1974 “Avtomobil nabiraet Valentina Yegorenkova…Maid of Honor of Catherine The Great nadezhnost” (short), and 1974 “Samye zemnye zaboty” Sergey Losev…Court Official Vadim Lobanov…Lord Chamberlain TILMAN BÜTTNER (January 22, 1964, East Germany) has 6 Vladimir Lisetsky…Court Minister cinematographer credits: 2007 Why Men Don't Listen and Women Aleksandr Malnykin…Servant of Peter The Great Can't Read Maps, 2005 “Kabale und Liebe”, 2004 Hinter der Tür Sergei Muchenikov…Museum Official (short), 2002 Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (segment "The Yuriy Orlov…Grandee of Catherine The Great Enlightenment"), 2002 Russian Ark, 1991 and Stalinallee (short). Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—2

SERGEI YEVTUSHENKO has four composer credits: 2009 The Last Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Station, 2007 The Border, 2002 Russian Ark, and 1999 Robert. A Никола́евич Соку́ров; born June 14, 1951) is a Russian filmmaker. Fortunate Life (short). His most significant works include a feature film, Russian Ark (2002), filmed in a single unedited shot, and Faust (2011), which was SERGEI DONTSOV… The Stranger (The Marquis de Custine) (b. honoured with the , the highest prize for the best film at Sergei Simonovich Drejden, September 14, 1941) has 24 acting the . credits: 2011 Expiation, 2009 “Ivan Groznyy”, 2009 Taras Bulba, Sokurov was born in Podorvikha, , in , 2009 Help Gone Mad, 2008 Antonina obernulas, 2007 Jolka, 2006 into a military officer's family. He graduated from the History Mnogotochie, 2004 Daddy, 2003 Do Not Make Biscuits in a Bad Department of the University in 1974 and entered Mood, 2002 Russian Ark, 2002 The Tale of Fedot, the Shooter, 2001 one of the VGIK studios the following year. There he became friends Podari mne lunnyy svet, 1999 Marigolds in Flower, 1998 Tsirk with Tarkovsky and was deeply influenced by his film Mirror. Most sgorel, i klouny razbezhalis, 1994 Viva Castro!, 1994 Okno v Parizh, of Sokurov's early features were banned by Soviet authorities. During 1993 Drug voyny (short), 1993 Vladimir svyatoy, 1991 Abdulladzhan, his early period, he produced numerous documentaries, including an ili posvyashchaetsya Stivenu Spilbergu, 1990 Tank 'Klim Voroshilov- interview with and a reportage about Grigori 2', 1989 Fontan, 1975 Moy dom, teatr, 1975 Vozdukhoplavatel, and Kozintsev's flat in St Petersburg. His film Mournful Unconcern was 1966 A Ballad of Love. nominated for the at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival in 1987. MARIYA KUZNETSOVA…Catherine The Great has 17 acting Mother and Son (1997) was his first internationally- credits: 2009 Dvoynaya propazha, 2006 Vy ne ostavite menya, 2006 acclaimed feature film. It was mirrored by Father and Son (2003), Travesti, 2005 Dreaming of which baffled the critics with its Space, 2005 The Italian, 2005 implicit homoeroticism (though Golova Klassika, 2005 “Kazus Sokurov himself has criticized this Kukotskogo”, 2004 Imeniny, particular interpretation). Susan 2003 Tayna Zaborskogo omuta, Sontag included two Sokurov 2002 Tycoon: A New Russian, features among her ten favorite 2002 Russian Ark, 2002 “Lyubov films of the 1990s, saying: imperatora”, 2001 Taurus, 1994 "There’s no director active today Koleso lyubvi, 1992 Glaza, 1989 whose films I admire as much." In Utoli moya pechali, and 1987 2006, he received the Master of “Gde by ni rabotat....” Cinema Award of the International Filmfestival Mannheim- LEONID MOZGOVOY…The Spy Heidelberg. has 13 acting credits: Sokurov is a Cannes Film 2011 “Raspoutine”, 2011 Gogol. Festival regular, with four of his Blizhayshiy, 2009 “Isayev”, 2009 movies having debuted there. “Ivan Groznyy”, 2007 However, until 2011, Sokurov Dyuymovochka, 2007 The didn't win top awards at major Border, 2006 Gadkie lebedi, 2005 Garpastum, 2002 Russian Ark, international festivals. For a long time, his most commercially and 2001 Taurus, 2001 Text or Apologia of a Commentary, 1999 Moloch, critically successful film was the semi-documentary Russian Ark 1992 Kamen, 2004 Bozhestvennaya Glikeriya, and 2003 In One (2002), acclaimed primarily for its visually hypnotic images and Breath: 's Russian Ark (short). single unedited shot. Sokurov has filmed a tetralogy exploring the corrupting MIKHAIL PIOTROVSKY…Himself (Hermitage Director) has four effects of power. The first three installments were dedicated to acting credits, all as himself: 2011 “Pozner”, 2003 “Shkola prominent 20th-century rulers: Moloch (1999), about Hitler, Taurus zlosloviya”, 2003 In One Breath: Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark (2000), about Lenin, and The Sun (2004) about Emperor . In (short), and 2002 Russian Ark. 2011, Sokurov shot the last part of the series, Faust, a retelling of Goethe's tragedy. The film, depicting instincts and schemes of Faust ALEKSANDR CHABAN…Boris Piotrovsky has four acting credits: in his lust for power, premiered on 8 September 2011 in competition 2005 “The Master and Margarita” (9 episodes), 2002 Russian Ark, at the 68th Venice International Film Festival. The film won the 2002 “Lyubov imperatora”, and 1992 The Waiting Room. Golden Lion, the highest award of the Venice Festival. Producer Andrey Sigle said about Faust: "The film has no particular relevance ALLA OSIPENKO… Herself (1932, Leningrad, USSR [now St. to contemporary events in the world—it is set in the early 19th Petersburg, Russia]) has 8 acting credits: 2002 Russian Ark, 1989 century—but reflects Sokurov's enduring attempts to understand man Otche nash, 1988 Filial, 1987 Fuete, 1987 Mournful Unconcern, and his inner forces." 1987 Ampir (short), 1985 Zimnyaya vishnya, and 1982 Golos . The military world of the former USSR is one of Sokurov’s D. ongoing interests, because of his personal connections to the subject and because the military marked the lives of a large part of population of the USSR. Three of his works, Spiritual Voices: From the Diaries From Wikipedia: of a War, , From the Commander’s Diary and Soldier’s Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—3

Dream revolve around military life. "Confession" has been screened reverence, the child-like wonder with which Alexandr Sokurov at several independent film festivals, while the other two are virtually approaches the in St Petersburg, the setting of his unknown. monumental film Russian Ark/Russkiy kovcheg. In 1994 Sokurov accompanied Russian troops to a post on The film’s sheer scale and ambition elicited gasps of awe the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border. The result was Spiritual Voices: upon its release in 2002. Four years in development, it was the first From the Diaries of a War, a 327-minute cinematic meditation on the feature to be shot in one continuous, HD Steadicam shot covering war and the spirit of the Russian army. Landscape photography is more than one and a half kilometres. Utilising more than 850 featured in the film, but the music (including works by Mozart, professional actors, 1000 extras and spanning three centuries of Messiaen and Beethoven) and the sound are also particularly Russian history, the film is set in a museum which holds several important. Soldiers’ jargon and the combination of animal sounds, million artworks. Russian Ark was, as Sokurov has stated, an attempt sighs and other location sounds in the fog and other visual effects to make a film “in one breath”. give the film a phantasmagorical feel. The film brings together all the The film’s narrative drive comes from the relationship elements that characterize Sokurov’s films: long takes, elaborate between the off-screen Russian narrator (Sokurov himself) and the filming and image processing methods, a mix of documentary and on-screen Marquis Astolphe de Custine (Sergei Dreiden), a 19th fiction, the importance of the landscape and the sense of a filmmaker century French diplomat. Custine, in his inflexible conviction of the who brings transcendence to everyday gestures. supremacy of Western European art over that of Russia, is the often- On the journey from Russia to the border post, in the film, cynical guide to the 33 opulent salons of the Hermitage (which, fear never leaves the faces of the young soldiers. Sokurov captures before 1917, was of course the ). As the camera moves their physical toil and their mental desolation, as well as daily rituals through the museum, the director recreates critical moments in such as meals, sharing tobacco, writing letters and cleaning duties. Russian history, introducing historical figures such as Catherine the There is no start or end to the dialogues; Sokurov negates Great, Peter I (the founder of St Petersburg in 1703) and Tsar conventional narrative structure. The final part of the film celebrates Nicholas II. the arrival of the New Year, 1995, but the happiness is fleeting. The Charlotte Garson has rightly observed that the film, as an following day, everything remains the same: the endless waiting at a extended plan-séquence, has its aesthetic antecedents in such films as border post, the fear and the desolation. those of Miklos Jancsò, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) and the In Confession: From the Commander’s Diary, Sokurov cinema of Max Ophuls. Garson tantalisingly speculates on how, with films officers from the Russian Navy, showing the monotony and access to Sokurov’s technology, these directors would have lack of freedom of their everyday lives. The dialogue allows us to undoubtedly relished the opportunity of composing an entire feature follow the reflections of a Ship Commander. Sokurov and his crew in a single extended sweep of the camera. However, for Sukurov, the went aboard a naval patrol ship headed for Kuvshinka, a naval base in technique is no gimmick, no “vain formal feat” or “supplementary the region, in the Barents Sea. Confined within the limited aesthetic trump card” – it is the very essence of the film. It could be space of a ship anchored in Arctic waters, the team filmed the sailors argued that the key relationship of Russian Ark is not that between the as they went about their routine activities. narrator and the Marquis but that between the camera and the Soldier’s Dream is another Sokurov film that deals with Hermitage. The film’s mise en scène is the living culture of Russian military themes. It contains no dialogue. This film actually came out and European history. of the material edited for one of the scenes in part three of Spiritual Of the directors cited above, I would argue that camera Voices. Soldier’s Dream was screened at the Oberhausen Film movement in Sokurov’s film comes closest to the feathery, ethereal Festival in Germany in 1995 – when Spiritual Voices was still at the glide of Ophuls, indeed many references are made in Sokurov’s film editing stage – as Sokurov's homage to the art critic and historian to floating, birds and flying. One passage near the beginning of the Hans Schlegel, in acknowledgement of his contributions in support of film, moving left to right outside a succession of windows recalls the Eastern European filmmakers. opening sequence of “Le Maison Tellier”, the central story in Le Plaisir (1952), Ophuls’ adaptation of three stories by Guy de Maupassant. Decidedly Ophulsian too, is Sokurov’s frequent subjugation of camera movement to actors. In the densely populated ceremonial scenes or the climactic ball, the movement of Tilman Büttner’s steadicam, whether moving along tightly regimented columns of soldiers or weaving amongst dancers, is never intrusive – characters swirl around the camera unencumbered. However, whilst Ophuls’ camera at times takes flight (and, as Kubrick famously exclaimed, “moves through walls”), Sokurov’s gaze can be more Pasquale Iannone in Senses of Cinema: closely likened to that of a child – free certainly, insatiably curious, Following on from Goethe’s famous observation that “architecture is but also cautious, often coming close to being a Deleuzian seer. On frozen music”, Raymond Durgnat has argued that cinema is the opening of each salon door, the camera hovers in wide-eyed “unfrozen architecture”: “When the camera moves, the roofline flows anticipation. Each opening is a revelation and none more so than the past us like a river. The camera tilts rapidly up, and banister and door opening into “1917” and leading to the introduction of Anastasia staircase cascade down.” and her sisters, one of the film’s most joyous, exhilarating passages. However, the camera, Durgnat argues, “explodes The Marquis shoos, then playfully runs after the children. Passing an architecture” because of its ability to distort scale. The latter emphasis exhausted Custine, the camera too careers breathlessly after them. As on the camera almost as mutilator could not be further from the a snapshot of the twilight of the Romanov dynasty, it is Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—4

unmistakeably Viscontian in its elegiac quality. and has looked there for his subject matter ever since. Only it's not The relationship between Custine and the narrator is one just history, to hear his admirers tell it: On Sokurov's own official whose dynamic shifts as regularly as the film’s diegesis shifts in Web site, one Russian critic describes the filmmaker's subject as space and time. The Marquis is first presented almost as a Nosferatu- "man and his fate" — surely a daunting ambition for anyone's like figure emerging from the shadows. Wiry, pallid, hunched and lifework, and one that has led to accusations of grandiosity. clad in black with sprigs of grey hair he becomes an irascible, laconic Certainly, only an artist with an inflated sense of mission could guide to the treasures of the Hermitage. His teacherly status is conceive of his work as a kind of biblical ark for 300 years of modern abruptly reversed when he arrives at a cold, colourless salon, filled Russian history. Russian Ark opens with a black screen and the voice with dust and empty frames – we are now in the time of World War of an unnamed filmmaker (Sokurov's, actually) explaining that he's II. A bewildered Marquis is warned by the narrator not to enter but he just regaining consciousness after some mysterious "accident" — does so nonetheless, encountering a museum worker in a room perhaps, the viewer may come to believe, the historical "anomaly" of depicting the hardship imposed on the Russian people and its culture Russian communism. When the black gives way to a clear image, during the . we're in a back courtyard of the Hermitage museum complex (of Tim Harte has observed that Custine “has gotten a stark which Peter the Great's Winter Palace is the oldest building) amid glimpse of the mortality officers and ladies, that contrasts with the dressed in 18th- film’s earlier evocations century finery, as they of the eternal within the make their way to a ubiquitous ‘living’ party inside. The frames featured camera/unseen elsewhere in the filmmaker scurries museum.” It is the along with them and narrator now who has to soon meets up with provide a history lesson the figure who will be for the Marquis. Apart our companion and from this wartime guide, a 19th-century segment, it is interesting French diplomat to note that there almost known only as the nothing in the film on Marquis (Sergey the Soviet era, with no Dreiden) — a man of mention of figures such exquisite taste, and at as Lenin or Stalin. the same time a Somewhat familiar Russian predictably for a film punching bag, the whose visuals are so Western dilettante spectacular, the film’s sound design has been largely neglected in blind to the depths of the aggrieved Russian soul. critical writings. There can surely be little doubt that the meticulous With the Marquis' appearance, the film settles into its formal visual choreography is also matched by the aural. After the opening structure, a journey through the Hermitage as art museum and living titles, and before a fade-in allows the camera to begin its flight, historical presence. Working with German cinematographer Tilman Sokurov introduces his narrator in complete darkness, with gusts of Büttner, who was the Steadicam operator on Tom Tykwer's Run Lola wind whistling on the soundtrack. The director’s own delivery is akin Run, Sokurov shot all of Russian Ark as one continuous take. To to that of one who has awoken from deep sleep in a state of accomplish this, he employed a high-definition video camera that bewilderment: “Where am I? Where are they rushing to? Has this all stored its images on a specially developed portable hard drive that been staged for me? Am I expected to play a role?” If we return to the could record up to 100 minutes of uncompressed images. (The video motif of the child, this emergence from darkness is of course akin to image was eventually transferred to 35mm film.) As the camera birth. makes its way through the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, the As the camera progresses through the Hermitage, the "ark" of the title, it weaves in and out of time periods, assessing soundtrack is peppered by whispers, chatter and hushed laughter from canvases and sculptures, glimpsing small vignettes and vast scenes. a plethora of characters. But constant throughout the film is an To make sure that our eyes don't get bored, the camera moves up, audible breathing – presumably of the narrator – symbolic of a culture down and all around, compensating for the absence of editing by that is living, a culture “destined to sail forever”. continually reframing the action. But clearly, something more serious than stylistic innovation is Harry Sheehan in LA Weekly, Jan 10-16, 2003, “Russian Ark”: afoot here — something too serious, Sokurov must have felt, for mere Writer-director Alexander (née Aleksandr) Sokurov — a perennial drama. Russian Ark doesn't act so much as it muses: on art, on presence at major film festivals with such recent work as Taurus history, on Russia versus the West, on politics. The first long segment (2000), Moloch (1999) and, earlier and much more satisfactorily, of the tour touches upon the creation of the Winter Palace by Peter Mother and Son (1996) — is on the whole more respected than the Great (Maxim Sergeyev), whom we spy in a small room, dressed beloved. Before attending film school, the now-51-year-old country in one of his favored peasant costumes, thrashing a general boy – turned – St. Petersburger got his university degree in history, presumptuous enough to have made advances to a princess. This Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—5

Asiatic tyrant, the Marquis sniffs, is a cultural parvenu who, tellingly, is invoking one of the great myths of White Russia, that of the built his "European" edifice on a swamp. missing princess who escaped the Bolshevik firing squad. Russian Sokurov's rejoinder is purely cinematic, a stunning coup of motion Ark is dallying with reaction here, and the flirtation persists right up that brings us up and down twisting to the film's end, which coincides with the end staircases, out into a vineyard of ropes and of the ball. As many hundreds of noble and creaking pulleys, a working backstage, military guests make their way down down across the top of an orchestra pit, and decorous, baroque-neoclassical halls to the up to a balcony where Catherine the Great huge main staircase, the camera walks among (who founded the Hermitage as a museum this politely surging mass of polished and stocked it with paintings and sculpture) humanity and, in a last bravura flourish, turns directs her own play, then dashes out to an and faces them head-on at the door and upstairs foyer in desperate need of a place watches as they pass behind and into the street. in which to "piss." High art, low comedy, Sokurov displays enormous ambivalence hard labor and royal prerogative are here throughout these scenes of court life. While thrown together in an elegant unity, a the Marquis runs off to join in the ball — and, breathtaking demonstration of Russian indeed, on many occasions when the Marquis cinematic — hence artistic — brilliance. runs off — the director's voice warns him to hold back. During the Russian Ark now begins a new sequence, detouring into a gallery ball, the Marquis, as he waltzes, can't even hear the director's voice as filled with modern-day museum visitors. Without finding the Marquis he mourns the passing of so many lives, though not the end of this particularly out of place, two of them — a doctor and an actor, friends way of life. As he stands and watches the partygoers exit to their of Sokurov — draw him over to a Tintoretto painting (The Birth of doom, it's with a certain detachment. John the Baptist) and discuss the symbolism of a cat and a chicken. The film has a secret code, and the code book is V.I. Pudovkin's Next, the Marquis encounters a blind woman feeling a statue; she 1927 Bolshevik classic The End of St. Petersburg, a story of the takes him onward to her favorite painting and stands aside as he communist revolution. As dedicated to expressive editing as Sokurov smells the oil on the canvas. is to long, long takes, Pudovkin ended his film on the same grand An intense desire to reanimate the artworks by bringing all the staircase as does Sokurov. But Pudovkin used montage to ascend the senses to bear on them culminates in a gallery of Goyas. Both the stairs and focused on an individual, a revolutionary woman searching Roman Catholic Marquis and the ever-unseen Sokurov are struck for her husband. dumb by the religiously themed canvases, as the camera nearly Sokurov’s long, unbroken shot with a huge group of aristocrats is brushes up against them in a gesture of infatuation. By now, the film's a riposte to Pudovkin’s. Additionally, Sokurov’s movie ends the same allusiveness has grown extraordinarily intense: Goya's rejection of year Pudovkin’s begins. Is Sokurov voicing a preference for the perspective and line in favor of color and light reflects the differences refinement of individual taste drawn from masses of undifferentiated between film and video. And in the very next scene, the Marquis aristocrats over the masses as represented by a single individual. It’s attacks a young Russian boy for not knowing enough to admire a difficult to say. Both films, in a sense, are overcome by their portrait of saints Peter and Paul he's gazing at, undoubtedly a techniques. reference to the palace's Tower of Saints Peter and Paul, a site of But Sokurov does connect one piece of history with another and much historical strife. that is no small accomplishment. Up till now, Russian Ark has been technically fascinating, but essentially cold and didactic. Now, energized by his encounter with Jeremy Heilman on MovieMartyr.com: fine art, the Marquis starts rhapsodizing over the cultural Surely one of the most technically impressive cinematic stunts ever sophistication of the Russian czars. Oh, they were beasts, he says, but attempted, I suppose one could say that Russian Ark, Aleksandr what good taste! (He would naturally think so: The Romanov court Sokurov’s ambitious new film centers around a gimmick, but you famously aped the French court in fashion and etiquette.) Then, in a realize it’s one hell of a gimmick once you see it implemented. fit of idle curiosity, he opens a door, only to find a hulk of a Filmed entirely in one shot, this digital experiment is insanely workingman — a survivor of Germany's 900-day siege of Leningrad elaborate in its compositions and costuming. It makes even the (Soviet-speak for St. Petersburg), in which as many as a million complex multiple split screen techniques of Mike Figgis’ Time Code succumbed to hunger and disease — talking of death and look simplistic. What begins as an exploration of the halls of the destruction. But the Marquis doesn't want to hear about it. He slams Royal Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg soon becomes a tour of the door shut and runs off to another building to join in a series of modern Russia’s, and human, history. Instead of the series of masques, official ceremonies and, finally, a gigantic, brilliantly relatively static tableaux that I expected, though, Sokoruv ducks, photographed ball that, according to the press notes, depicts the last bobs, and weaves his way throughout the museum with as much Great Royal Ball ever held in the Winter Palace, in 1913. Transfixed aplomb as any director working without a one-shot quota. The by the high life of the royal court, the Marquis doesn't want to hear script’s surprising playfulness keeps things fresh as the movie buzzes about the struggles of the Russian masses. along. History becomes a malleable and transient thing as with entry But what, in the end, does Sokurov want to tell us about them? into each decked out room we enter into another era of time and Between the big fancy-dress scenes, there are smaller, more nostalgic history. When we encounter an elderly Catherine II after earlier moments. After a small group of lovely girls skip down a hall dressed seeing a younger version of her frolicking about in the same shot as angels, one goes in to sit with her father, Emperor Nicholas II, and some minutes earlier, it comments mournfully on the rapidity with mother, Empress Alexandra, and is addressed as Anastasia. Sokurov which we age. Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—6

All of the sumptuous period detail that Sokurov piles on during Great beats his general; Catherine the Great attends a rehearsal in the Russian Ark is given the expected reverence of a film that's been theatre; Nicholas I receives the Persian ambassador to take an made with the blessing of a state museum, but the film never becomes apology for the murder of Russian diplomats, among them didactic or boring because of the larger theme that binds together all Griboedov, in Tehran; and Nicholas II has breakfast with his wife of the temporal and spatial places that we travel during the course of Alexandra and his children, including Anastasia and the hemophiliac the shot. With his typically sparse philosophical aloofness, the Alexis. This sequence of historical events ends with the finale, the director puts forth the intriguing idea that we honor history and save last ball in the Winter Palace in 1913. On the other hand there are art so that we might fend off our own undeniable mortality. In characters of different epochs, rupturing the neat chronology of the scattered moments throughout the journey, this premise achieves real Romanov dynasty: Valerii Gergiev, the conductor of the Mariinskii emotional poignancy. The gracefully floating camera conveys the Theatre, conducts the mazurka from Glinka’s Life of a Tsar. Past and mostly unseen narrator’s point of view, but he occasionally interacts current directors of the Hermitage museum discuss problems of with a mysterious European man in black, who is a lot more vocal conservation, and worry about the authorities’ lack of understanding about his sense of loss. Through their relationship, which echoes the of cultural heritage. Contemporary visitors stand next to historical rapport between Russia and the rest of Europe, we come to characters in the museum. Moreover, time passes at the speed of understand the way that Russia became a country that became so breath: the empress Catherine is a young woman during the rehearsal utterly convinced of the power of its own pageantry. Other scenes, at the Hermitage Theatre; a few rooms later she is an old woman, such as the indelible one where we see a blind woman caressing the running off into the Hanging Gardens to get some fresh air. Some works of a master sculptor so she might understand their greatness, rooms contain the future of the past: a room with empty hoar-frosted are no less affecting. It becomes quite apparent that the bond between frames remind of the blockade of Leningrad during World War II the transcendent nature of great art and the inevitability of human when the canvasses were evacuated to Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg). foible is an unbreakable and necessary link, and Sokurov’s The journey through the space of the past is a journey through time, examination of the two is as thought provoking as it’s nimbly but the two never intersect. History possesses chronology, while presented. For those who find Sokurov’s philosophies tiresome, existing simultaneously with the present and other epochs. The Russian Ark is still a must-see. Even before it builds up to its insanely Hermitage is an enclosed space, containing past and present, staged ballroom scene, in which 3000 actors appear in full regalia, it’s preserving the past for the future. It is the preservation of the past for waltzed itself into the pantheon. the present which interests both the Hermitage museum and the film- maker Sokurov. The Hermitage functions as the ark of Russian cultural heritage, containing one of the largest collections of paintings and the treasures of the Romanov Empire. In travelling through Russia’s past Sokurov aims to recreate its splendour. He draws, however, exclusively on that period of Russian history when the country was most exposed to European influences. He excludes the period before Peter the Great (the tsar who opened Russian to the West and founded the city of Petersburg as the ‘window onto Europe’) and ends his account with the last tsar, Nicholas II, excluding eighty years of Soviet rule and ten years of post-Soviet Russia. Sokurov refuses to see continuity from the to Soviet rule, as well as from the Kievan to the Russian Empire; moreover, he is not at all concerned with the politics of the time. Sokurov thus renounces the twentieth century as unworthy of depiction and lacking cultural value. Birgit Beumers, KinoKultura 2003: Sokurov guides his viewer on the journey through the Hermitage not Sokurov’s Russian Ark (Russkii kovcheg, 2002) is a 96-minute-long with an authorial narrative, but through the character of the Marquis tracking shot filmed with a steadicam held by the director of de Custine, the French aristocrat who visited Russia in 1839 in an photography Tilman Buettner, whose excellent camerawork could be attempt to find there a justification for an absolute monarchy. He seen in Run Lola Run (Lola rennt, Tom Tykwer, 1997). There is thus returned to France a convinced republican. Custine’s account of his not a single cut in this film. The camera follows minutely visit to Russia brought him success as a writer, while his harsh and choreographed movements along a 1.5 km track with 33 sets of the cynical account of Russian despotism was banned in Russia. Custine 862 actors donning 360 costumes and masked with three buckets of finds Russia a terrifying police state, a country where people lie powder. The filming took place on 23 December 2001, the shortest bluntly to the foreign visitor and erect a façade of splendour and day in the year, in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, leaving entertainment to hide chaos, where the ruling despot is adored by his just four hours of daylight during the polar nights for filming after slaves, who live only to achieve salvation of their misery through two days of preparation in the museum. The film creates the salvation in death, where neither the church has any moral authority impression that the uninterrupted journey through 300 years of nor nobility any duties. Russia is a country that lacks a national history and 33 rooms of the Hermitage takes just one long breath. The identity, imitating Europe instead. Using Custine as prism for a view sensation of floating through history is achieved by a sheer technical on Russian history and culture, we are invited to acknowledge in feat. Russian history only those elements that are pale imitations of Sokurov compresses time. On the one hand, there are scenes European culture and history. At the end of the twentieth century from the life of the Russian tsars in chronological order: Peter the nothing of value remains of Russia. Russia without its European Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—7

connection is void. Russia is neither part of Asia nor its master. The to an ornate private theater where a play is being performed for final image of the film leads from the ‘ark’ (Hermitage) to the sea Catherine I, 100 years before. The traveler and the stranger later (the Neva) – a murky, foggy, grey patch of marshland rises outside observe silently as Peter the Great belittles a subservient courtier, and the entrance to the Hermitage: subsequently debate history's perception of the man as a tyrant. Sokurov says farewell to Europe as he leaves the year 1913, They're surprised to pass into the present momentarily and discuss the and thus annihilates Russia’s history that ensues. What remains in the museum's magnificent collection with modern patrons before opening ark is the splendid past, eclipsing the horrors of the Soviet regime, but a door and finding themselves in the middle of a the Nazi siege on also the Russian art movements of the 19th and early 20th century. Leningrad (which was the city's name during the Soviet era). Having severed its links with Europe, the ship is destined to sail And on it goes, in one fluid steadycam shot without a single edit, forever in the limbo between Europe and Asia. through a dozen eras of Russian history; through scores of While creating a masterpiece of technological mastery of magnificent rooms with decorated ceilings and marble walls; through time Sokurov creates an unbridgeable abyss between Europe and hundreds upon hundreds of lavishly costumed extras; and through Asia, placing Russia clearly in a European context, of which it is a curious philosophical discussions between the two unwitting poor imitator, a chimera, a ghost ship. The Hermitage is the ark, companions about Russian history and culture. carrying Russia’s cultural heritage; as such, it harbours vast The logistical feats of this movie are unprecedented -- imagine the collections of Asian, Oriental and Russian art as well as Western planning involved in having a 150-room museum filled with European art. Sokurov chooses to ignore the Oriental/Asian part of hundreds of people in period costume (including four live orchestras), the ark’s content, concentrating exclusively on the parts that deprive all of whom must be in precisely the right places at the right times Russia of its own/another cultural identity and bear witness to the because there can be no second take. But "Russian Ark" is so vivid imported cultural heritage from Western Europe. and spellbinding that such rational thoughts will be the farthest thing

from your mind as you're drawn into the eras and events that unfold Rob Blackwelder in First Person, Past Tense: before your eyes. There is a genius to the experimental and utterly surreal historical The history is fascinating, whether you're familiar with epic "Russian Ark" that has nothing to do with the fact that it was Russia's past or not (although I'm sure the more one knows, the better shot in one uninterrupted, mind-boggling 93-minute take that passes it gets), and the journey of its characters as they slip between epochs dreamlike through three centuries of Russia's royal past. is engrossingly bizarre. If this movie had been made traditionally -- several takes of The performance of Dreiden as the aged, unruly-haired and every scene edited together with close-ups, two-shots, etc. -- its story slightly Puckish stranger -- an eerily calm oddity in a long, cap- would still be enthralling as it follows a traveler (or is he a ghost?) set sleeved winter coat who keeps his arms folded formally behind his adrift in time inside the breathtakingly grand Hermitage Museum of back except when struck with the impulse to be flamboyantly St. Petersburg, the former Winter Palace of the czars. theatrical -- is strange enough to keep the traveler (and by extension As writer-director Alexander Sokurov ("Mother and Son") us filmgoers) off balance. But he is congruent enough in the movie's turns you, the viewer, into this traveler with psychologically seamless living history to occasionally merge into a period party crowd, for first-person cinematography (by Tilman Buttner “Run Lola Run”), example, leaving us momentarily lost in time. the film becomes almost literally transporting, bringing alive the But more importantly, Sokurov's camera behaves exactly as courts of bygone Catherines and Nicholases as it whisks you from any of us might if we found ourselves invisibly enveloped in another room to room and era to era. time and place. Fascinated by every detail, sometimes we the traveler Guided by an eccentric French stranger (Sergey Dreiden), a become distracted, staring at the tense hands of a royal guard. Other similarly limboed 19th century diplomat who is able to interact with times we watch in amazed bewilderment as a museum employee the people of the various centuries in a way the traveler cannot, we're backs away from us in a startled manner. What does he see? During a witness to incredibly tangible moments of history -- some random, 19th Century ball, we float through the dancers, then move across the some pivotal -- as we pass through the opulent halls and ballrooms of room to see the view from the orchestra stage (providing the film's the vast palace. one visual mistake for the detail-oriented -- a musician wearing Leaving an 18th century party through a dark staircase leads modern glasses). Sokurov—RUSSIAN ARK—8

"Russian Ark" may be an astonishing achievement in become invisible and forgotten. filmmaking, but what makes it unforgettable is Sokurov's ability to Quite simply, I've never seen -- or even imagined -- anything draw us so deeply into the vibrant worlds he conjures -- without any like it. cinematic slight of hand -- that the technical aspects of the picture

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2012 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXV: Nov 27 WHITE MATERIAL Claire Denis 2009 Dec 4 A SEPARATION Asghar Farhadi 2011

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The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center and State University of New York at Buffalo with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News

Spring 2013 Buffalo Film Seminars XXVI (preliminary screening list):

George Pabst, Pandora’s Box 1929 Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator 1940 Marcel Carné, Les visiteurs du soir1942 Jean Vigo, L’Atalante 1947 Orson Welles, Touch of Evil 1958 Kon Ichikawa, Revenge of a Kabuki Actor 1963 John Huston, Fat City 1972 Volker Schlöndorf, The Tin Drum 1979 Mike Leigh, Naked 1994 Michael Cimino, Heaven’s Gate 2000 Paul Thomas Anderson, Punch-Drunk Love 2002 Sidney Lumet, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead 2007 Zack Snyder, Watchmen 2009 Marleen Gorris, Within the Whirlwind 2009