This isn't documentary; it is historical pageant, with scenes staged for each room along the journey. Sokurov himself narrates as the off-screen voice of the spirit-like observer while our journey is guided by "The Stranger" (as he's identified in the credits), a spindly figure in 18th century finery commenting on the art works and historical details while gesticulating with theatrical flourish. Sergey Dreyden plays the role of the playful time-traveler, a man oddly at home in all eras, which Sokurov modeled on The Marquis de Custine, a real-life French aristocrat and historian of the 19th century. Other historical figures who appear along the journey include Peter the Great, Catherine II, and Nicholas I.
One gallery teems with contemporary patrons appreciating the masterworks on the walls, the next salon is the site of an 18th century reception and the Hermitage is, once again, the Winter Palace of the Tsar. We slip into a storeroom where a workman creates coffins for the dead of World War I, find the throne-room long after the Tsar's time as Cold War era curators and discuss the problems in holding on to the museum's history in the face of the Soviet government, and join in the reverie of the last royal ball of 1913, the final grand celebration of the palace before the revolution swept the monarchy out. It could be a metaphor for the transporting power of artifacts and art and historical preservation to sweep us into the past.
The handheld camera floats through the world as the distant observer, taking in grand long shots filled with figures or the cavernous spaces of sparsely populated rooms, and moves in to commune with the characters and take in the minute details of individual paintings and sculptures. Sokurov doesn't resort to tricks to stitch together the illusion of continuous shooting. Russian Ark is the first full-length, single-screen feature film shot in a single, unedited take, the longest sustained SteadiCam sequence in a film, and the first uncompressed High Definition movie recorded to a hard disc.
The Hermitage itself initiated the project as a way to showcase the museum on film and invited producers Jens Meurer, Karsten Stoter and Andrey Deryabin to undertake the production. They approached esteemed Russian director Alexander Sokurov with an irresistible offer to create a film of his choosing to celebrate the Hermitage. Sokurov came up with the idea of shooting the film in a single, unbroken take on digital cameras: "To make a film in one breath," in his own words. Tilman Büttner, a veteran Steadicam operator from Germany who had photographed (among many other films) the impressive handheld scenes of Run Lola Run (1998), was approached to shoot the film. The production demanded a high definition digital recording on a camera system that could hold over 90 minutes of 35mm quality footage. At the turn of the 21st century, before the film industry had fully embraced digital as the new standard format, the technology was not yet there, but strides were being made and Büttner found a brand new Sony system that recorded uncompressed HD images directly onto a one terabyte hard disk. He built his own Steadicam system to accommodate the technology.
The technical and practical challenges were legion. The route Sokurov and Büttner finally mapped out through the Hermitage measured almost a mile long. They spent weeks planning and prepping the shoot, with individual scenes and transitions rehearsed in advance, but Büttner only walked the entire route five times before the day of shooting and there was not the opportunity for a full dress rehearsal. The Hermitage, a busy, bustling museum, could only be shut down for a single day of shooting. No actual historical items could touched by the actors (props were substituted for dramatic scenes) and the camera operators could go no closer than two meters from the objects on display. The production team had only 36 hours to dress and light each of the dozens of rooms along their journey (some filled with set pieces and props to reflect its use in past eras) and, due to the limited hours of sunlight in the Saint Petersburg winter, were limited to a four hour window. The entire production gambled on putting it all together in a single day. br>
When shooting began on December 23, 2001, it was the complete first run through of the production. Over 180 actors, 1300 extras, and a full symphony orchestra had to perform on cue without making a mistake while the crew (which included more than 20 assistant directors to manage the separate locations and scenes) tackled the technical and aesthetic challenges. The first three attempts were cut short by technical difficulties and the entire production quickly reset to begin again. The fourth take was a success.
Because of the difficulty of the production, with Sokurov simultaneously directing the actors and shepherding the crew and a translator playing go-between with Sokurov, who spoke no German, and Büttner, who didn't speak Russian, sound was added later. "Every time I did the take, or someone else made a mistake, I would curse, and that would have gotten in," recalled Büttner. Minor errors and adjustments were also made in post-production, from reframing the image to remove visible lights to manipulating the color temperature from room to room to enhance the atmosphere, from the warm glow of lanterns of intimate times to the bone cold of winter sun in the shadow of the Cold War.
"[T]he effect of the unbroken flow of images (experimented with in the past by directors like Hitchcock and Max Ophuls) is uncanny," wrote Roger Ebert in his celebratory review of the film. "If cinema is sometimes dreamlike, then every edit is an awakening. Russian Ark spins a daydream made of centuries." It is beautiful, breathtaking, astonishing, and elegant, an unprecedented achievement and unlike any other film made before or since.
By Sean Axmaker
Sources: Film After Film, J. Hoberman. Verso, 2012.
Interview with Tilman Büttner. Indiewire, Nov. 26, 2002.
In One Breath: The Making of Russian Ark, documentary directed by Knut Elstermann. The Hermitage Bridge Studio, 2003.
Jens Meurer DVD commentary. Wellspring, 2003.
