Culture Screened Through Artistic Medium

Author: Laura Rockefeller

This year's Nicholas R. Clifford Symposium, "What Became of Peter's Dream?" came to a close on Saturday, Sept. 20 with a screening of Aleksandr Sokurov's spectacular film "Russian Ark." Although in her introduction to the afternoon screening, Tatiana Smorodinska, professor of Russian, said that initially she had "had reservations about the reception of Sokurov's films by American audiences," there was no doubt about the enthusiastic reception that the film received from the audience in Dana Auditorium.

"Russian Ark" is an almost unprecedented piece of cinematic art in that the entire 96 minute movie, which takes the audience on a journey throughout the enormous Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg, is one uncut take. Such a feat only recently became possible with the advent of new digital technology.

Even though Sokurov's team was working with cutting edge equipment, they had many technical difficulties to deal with in order to create the seamless and graceful film that was at long last released. After preparing for two years, the team of 1500 actors, four live orchestras and a substantial technical crew had only one day to shoot the entire film in one 90 minute stretch.

In an interview about his work, Sokurov explained that it was not simply, as Smorodinska put it, "the Russian desire to break all world records," that prompted him to film the entire movie in one take. He explained that "Doing a single take suits our goal of understanding the breadth of time."

The film certainly succeeded in giving the audience a better understanding of "the breadth of time" as it conducted the audience through the various rooms of the museum and three centuries of Russian history.

The movie opened with a black screen as a disembodied male voice explained to the audience that, after an unspecified accident, the speaker had awoken in a state of darkness and confusion. Gradually the speaker's sight cleared and both he and the audience saw a high-spirited group of ladies and gentlemen in 19th century evening dress alight from a carriage in front of an elegant entrance way. The narrator of the adventure, who remained hidden behind the camera for the duration of the film, followed the couples into the Hermitage, taking the fascinated audience with him.

As the narrator led the audience from room to room and from the 19th century to the 18th century to the 21st century and back, it ceased to seem bizarre that hundreds of years of Russian history were coexisting in this incredible building. Like the eccentric Frenchman who joined the narrator and the audience on their journey through time, the audience gradually came to accept this mysterious world where all of history was alive and a vital part of the past, present and future.

Not only did the film bring history to vibrant life, it also explored the intricate connection between history and art - and not just studio art, but also music and theater. It was the combination of sumptuous period costumes, beautiful period music, breathtaking rooms of the Hermitage and the work of the actors that brought the scenes from Russia's past to life in a way that was truly exciting and believable.

In a discussion with two characters from the 21st century, the Frenchman was asked whether he was truly interested in beauty or only in beauty as it was represented by art, although in this film there did not seem to be a difference between the two. By the final scene of the imperial ball, with hundreds of extras dancing a sparkling Mazurka in a sea of white chiffon and silk, the audience had forgotten that what they were watching was, in fact, artifice.

The dancers, orchestra and bystanders all seemed like real people from Russia's past in their usual element going about the business of court life. It was almost a shock to realize that they were, in fact, only shades of the past who, after the single day of filming, would dissolve back into the daily life of the 21st century in the same way that the mist off the sea dissolved into the stormy sky during the final shot of the film.