jeeap I'm not a big fan of Sokurov. Not even a small one. But I couldn't get away from the screen this time. I was glued to that. There's no real story in it, just a picture hypnotising you. The voice of main character behind the camera is so low you barely hear what he is saying, if at all. And it doesn't matter. The dialogs seem redundant and random, and the main message is obscure. Somehow it feels right.

adriennenoracarter Sokurov's Russian Ark begins with a narrator waking up in the Hermitage, not knowing what time period he has stumbled into. He soon runs into a mysterious man dressed in black—the only person throughout the movie who notices the narrator. The narrator calls the mysterious man the 'European' throughout most of the movie. The film is the two wandering through the Hermitage; as they wander through the hermitage, they also wander through Russian history: they run into characters such as Peter the Great, Katherine the Great—they see scenes from WWII, and dance through a grand state ball. Russian Ark is an extremely beautiful work. It is filmed in one continuous shot—the audience never sees the narrators, as the camera lens serves as his eyes. By the middle of the film, the viewer has forgotten the camera is there and is nearly seeing the Hermitage through their own eyes, through the several different periods of history the characters explore. The name of the movie, Russian Ark, tells the audience a lot about what it is about to see. The Hermitage serves as an ark for Russian history—the ending scene where the narrator is surrounded by the ocean tells us as much. The Hermitage has survived so much and will continue to preserve Russian—and a lot of European—history through the storms of time. The move back to great pride in Russian history shows that the Soviet period is truly over and Russia is moving on to a new period of Russian nationalism.

Jackson Booth-Millard I think I first found out about the film properly when it was mentioned in the TV documentary series The Story of Film: An Odyssey, and I saw it listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I knew as a film lover it was one I had to see. Basically the whole film takes place during a winter's day inside and outside of a Winter Palace manor and museum, all seen through the point of view of an unseen Narrator (Alexander Sokurov, also directing), going through 33 rooms and courtyards, and there are no cuts whatsoever. It begins with a small party of men and women in a horse-drawn carriage arriving at the side entrance, the unseen narrator meets the European / the Stranger (The Marquis de Custine) (Sergey Dreyden). The narrator follows the stranger through numerous rooms of the palace, each room manifesting a different period, not in chronological order, or Russian history. Featured are one of the generals of Peter the Great (Maksim Sergeyev) being harassed; the era of Catherine the Great (Mariya Kuznetsova) with a spectacular presentation of operas and plays; Tsar Nicholas II (Vladimir Baranov) in front of an imperial audience being offered a formal apology for the the death of ambassador Alexander Griboedov by the Shah of Iran, also the idyllic family life of his children; the ceremonial changing of the Palace Guard; during the rule of Joseph Stalin the museum director is whispering that repairs are needed; and during the 900 day siege of the city during World War II a desperate man from Leningrad is making his own coffin. A grand ball follows with many participants being in spectacular period costume, the music of Mikhail Glinka is featured, a full orchestra being conducted by Valery Gergiev is playing, then a crowd is seen going down the grand staircase for the long final exit. The narrator then walks out of the hallway backwards to see many different people dressed in clothing from different time periods, the narrator then leaves the building through the side exit. The narrator sees an endless ocean as he leaves and does not look back or see the building, this could be interpreted as an ark preserving Russian culture as it floats in the sea of time. Also starring Leonid Mozgovoy as The Spy, David Giorgobiani as Orbeli and Aleksandr Chaban as Boris Piotrovsky. This film took four attempts to complete, the first three attempts were riddled with technical problems, but the fourth attempt of continuous single-take filming became was successful and is the final, a full hour and forty minutes of POV Steadicam uncut footage. There are some interesting things to see throughout the unedited sweep in and out of the building, including paintings and other artwork, and 2,000 actors and three orchestras in period costume, I will be honest that the draw to this film is obviously the fact that it is all one take, but it is a well executed experimental film drama. Very good!

Carolina Agnelli (Please excuse my poor English) There is no way to deny the presence of montage in Russian Ark. Even though the film is a single long take, and the editing afterwards does not change the film narrative, there is a structure in the film that would not be capable of becoming solid without the concept of montage that we know thanks to Eisenstein. On the book The Making Of Film Sense, by Eisenstein, he explains the montage of a film, and discusses how the montage is about a lot of things, not just the editing after the shooting. Eisenstein explains how the structure of the film is constructed like a music in an orchestral score. This score has its vertical structure and its horizontal structure. The horizontal structure is where the music is developed, but the vertical structure provides a interlink between the horizontals structures, making a complex and harmonic music movement. If you add visual images in the horizontal structure you have the same effect as in music, where the parts are conducted by the vertical structured that links all the horizontal images and sounds, creating a sequence in a movie. These structures are made for the spectator to understand the information that the film is trying to pass, by developing a subject (horizontal) and connecting its parts with each other (vertical). Eisenstein discusses about what guides the spectator through these structures, and make clear that the montage is not only about the EDITING process, but is also how the author (director, screenwriter) creates emotions, giving to the spectator information like the smells, the light, colors, etc. These information will create a sense in the spectator about the movie and will guide him through it. The montage is also in the process of making the "mise en scene", not only editing the film afterwards. So for sure Russian Ark is a movie Eisenstein-like. :)