Russian Ark

That Russian Ark is a smart, well-made movie seems almost incidental. This film by Russian director Alexander Sokurov demands to be seen for a more basic reason: it is a milestone in cinema history, one that gracefully goes where no feature film has gone, enfolding all its action within a single 90 minute take.

Every era brings its milestones. Moviegoers who were around in 1927 could brag of having bought a ticket to the first talkie, The Jazz Singer; moviegoers in the 50s could brag of seeing the first movies made in Cinemascope (The Robe) and Cinerama (This Is Cinerama). However, those were sorry excuses for movies-glorified demo reels. Filmmakers didn't figure out how to properly use the new technologies for years, even decades. I'd argue, for instance, that the super-wide frame didn't reach its full potential until Nicholas Ray and Sergio Leone got hold of it, and that the soundtrack didn't grow up until the 70s, with the killer combo of Robert Altman and Dolby stereo.

The time traveling historical essay Russian Ark-which involved months of rehearsal with 867 costumed performers, and takes viewers on a tour of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg-is no mere demo reel. See it once, and you've been a part of movie history; see it again, and the overpowering strangeness of its one-take structure recedes, enabling you to appreciate not the technology itself, but its artistic implications.

For the past century, theorists and scholars have speculated on the merits and drawbacks of a one-take feature-a movie that was, for all intents and purposes, not edited; one that unspooled its action continuously. This was considered impossible because even the largest 35 mm film magazines couldn't hold more than a few minutes of unexposed film stock; even recently, after a century of technological advancement, a 10-minute take was still the limit. Orson Welles pulled off the showiest long take of the black-and-white era in Touch of Evil, and Alfred Hitchcock created the illusion of a one-take feature film with his thriller Rope, albeit with quite a bit of cheating. (Whenever the film stock was about to run out, Hitchcock's cameraman would push in tight on something black-often the back of an actor's jacket-to give the editor a subtle place to cut.)

Throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s, a parade of important (and self-important) directors-including Kubrick, Scorsese, De Palma, Spielberg, Jonathan Demme and Paul Thomas Anderson-tried to outdo Welles and Hitchcock by keeping long takes going for minutes at a time and packing the frame with dozens, even hundreds of extras. Often they made the scene's elaborate choreography transparent, as if demanding that audiences forget about the movie for a moment and appreciate their mind-boggling cleverness.

Although it's easy to think of super-long takes purely as opportunities to show off, the long take is esthetically significant. It represents one extreme of an old, still-unresolved argument in film theory, namely: Does the essence of cinema lie in camera movement, composition and the arrangement of objects before the lens, or in the editing room? Thanks to the technical limitations of film cameras and the academic triumph of montage theory-exemplified by D.W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein and other editing room pioneers-the long take never had much chance at winning the argument. Editing allows one to expand, contract and otherwise manipulate and master time. The long take makes one more aware of time-the immutability of time, the continuous, merciless flow of time. Editing, by its very nature, chases immortality and omniscience; the unbroken long take acknowledges mortality; it also suggests a limited, subjective experience. There are no cuts in real life; ergo, when a movie scene unfolds without cutting, even when the onscreen action is absurd, it still feels more urgent, more real somehow, than a scene that's edited-almost tactile.

Film is, by its very nature, a third-person objective medium. And yet, subjective long takes bring it eerily close to first-person. When the long-take camera is associated with a particular character-placed behind the shoulder of Jake LaMotta as he enters a boxing ring in Raging Bull, or behind little Danny's roving Big Wheel in The Shining-you really feel as though you're with the character, even inside his head.

Russian Ark understands these principles and deploys them throughout its dreamy running time. Shot with a 24-frame High Definition video camera strapped to a gyroscopically stabilized Steadicam rig, it's a first-person movie from start to finish. The protagonist literally is the camera-a visitor inexplicably placed at the Hermitage, then led on a tour of the vast complex that takes him in and out of different periods of Russian history without warning or explanation. As this visitor moves slowly and gracefully through the Hermitage, bantering with a cynically funny French diplomat, the Marquise de Custine (Sergey Dreiden) and sometimes seeming to muse in voiceover, we pass by artwork by Rubens and Van Dyck. We see the family of the last tzar dining together and Peter the Great whipping one of his generals, and listen as our protagonist and his deadpan-amusing tour buddy debate Russian art's fealty to European taste (especially the Italians).

Like Peter Greenaway and Kristof Kieslowski, Sokurov is a defiantly conceptual filmmaker who packs his features with recurring patterns, even jokes; the title Russian Ark is funny (even punny) when you consider how Sokurov tried to pack centuries' worth of experience into one movie, and how many of the characters and scenes have twins within the story.

It would be nice to report that Russian Ark works on every level, and that everyone who buys a ticket will adore it. It's not a cuddly, accessible movie. It's slow and cerebral, even dull in spots. Visually, the movie can't help defeating itself because while it was shot on video, it had to be transferred to film for exhibition, which means the movie's warm colors became muddy and muted and its single take must be broken up for reel changes. (Damned film!) And frankly, there are times when the novelty of the one-take format wears off and you do feel as if you're wandering around a museum with a strange French guy, sharing a slow psychedelic experience. It's an exceedingly strange, discombobulating experience, like visiting the world's most intellectually credentialed haunted house-and the comparison is not unwarranted. Russian Ark is as much a ghost story as an art film. It's a meditation on how the past continues to affect (even inhabit) the present. It's also a playful exploration of the very properties of time. By shooting the entire film as one long take, Sokurov enforces the idea of a subjective, continuous experience, yet by taking us through the centuries and introducing us to various historical figures and nameless peasants in the space of 90 minutes, he suggests that time can be suspended, or overlapped, or folded in on itself: that time can be timeless, that limits can be limitless.

Additional praise is due the film's director of photography and sole camera operator, Tilman Buttner, best known for his astounding Steadicam work on Run Lola Run. In essence, he's the movie's leading man, giving a 90-minute performance with 90 pounds of camera gear strapped to his body and making cinema history in the process. If Russian Ark is the cinematographic equivalent of the Apollo mission, Buttner is Neil Armstrong. One strange gig for a man, one giant leap for movies.