omewhere in time, the ghost of a 19th-century French diplomat (Dreiden) comes to terms with the fact that he's suddenly speaking Russian and wandering the passageways of St. Petersburg's Hermitage, the Winter Palace of the Russian czars. Disoriented only slightly by all this, the "Stranger" quickly strikes up a conversation with an unnamed voice from the present day (actually director Aleksandr Sokurov) who ends up accompanying the ghost on a short-but-grand journey.
Most often invisibly, the two explore the myriad halls of the great palace/museum, and as they move from space to space they frequently travel from decade to decade, even from century to century. In one room, 21st-century tourists gaze at masterpieces of European art, in another the Stranger discusses Van Dyck with a blind angel, in another Catherine the Great (Kuznetsova) rushes from the scene of a play she's rehearsing for a bathroom emergency, and in yet another a coffin maker bemoans Russian wartime deaths at the hands of the Germans.
Despite the Stranger's acute mindfulness toward all the wonders he's observing, he's far from always having something good to say—the diplomat's feelings toward Russia are ambivalent at best, as he often snobbishly pits the characteristics of the eastern empire against what he considers more "European"—and therefore superior—sensibilities.
But this is not the view of the present-day voice, whose sympathies lie more in the heart of Mother Russia, despite—or perhaps because of—all her tragedies and contradictions. And so a tête-à-tête develops between the ghost and the voice, wherein the natures of art, culture, history and immortality are explored as the two souls journey through space and time.
A philosophical time-travel tale
Aleksandr Sokurov's time-travel tale is a fascinating work of cinema that is at once thought-provoking, lyrical, playful and engaging, and it conveys its numerous messages not only with the words that come out of its characters' mouths but with its very style and structure.
Few would argue that the most impressive thing about this film is the fact that it is made up of one 96-minute-long take (meant to be the point of view of the present-day voice). Masterfully shot on high-definition digital video with some incredible Steadicam work and a custom-made hard drive, Russian Ark's technical achievements are truly astounding, especially when taking into account the dozens of characters the story follows—however briefly—and sequences like the film's
final one, an arabesque recreation of the last Great Royal Ball at the Winter Palace in 1913, complete with a full orchestra and hundreds of extras in full costume.
As it sweeps its gaze over the countless, splendorous sights of the Hermitage, at its best Russian Ark plays like a filmic "Pictures at an Exhibition." At its less exciting moments—and there are a few—it feels like spending too much time at a museum with a rather tiresome companion.
And while the film's plot isn't exactly its driving force, the thoughts the movie conveys—both with subtlety and with grandeur—and the contemplations it inspires are significant. As the narrators/protagonists observe, have quirky encounters with and are chased from room to room by various other characters in the film (often because, as the voice tells the ghost, even though the Stranger has descended from heaven he still doesn't know how to behave), viewers may wonder if life and the afterlife aren't equally strange and if the past, present and future aren't seamless and simultaneous after all.
