{"id":3730,"date":"2014-10-29T07:27:58","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T11:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3730"},"modified":"2015-01-03T07:30:03","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T12:30:03","slug":"russian-ark-2002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3730","title":{"rendered":"Russian Ark (2002)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RussianA combination of incredibly poor planning and the exigencies of our Netflix list in one week produced two arty but, let\u2019s face it, slow-moving movies set in museums [Museum Hours<\/em> reviewed 10-22]. Russian Ark <\/em>(trailer<\/a>), too, had rave reviews from critics and is perhaps best known for the incredible way it was shot. The whole thing\u2014all 96 minutes of it\u2014is one unbroken take. Really. Filming in The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the royal-palace-cum-art-treasurehouse, director Alexander Sokurov and his cinematographer Tillman Buttner had use of this incomparable setting for a single day. You can say this for them, they made the most of it.<\/p>\n

The film follows a mysterious and unnamed museum visitor, purportedly the Marquis de Custine, who wanders its hallways, back passages, and famous galleries, encountering notable Russians from the past\u2014Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, the Romanovs (that\u2019s the Romanov daughters, destined to be gunned down in the Communist Revolution in the picture). For the most part he is unseen, or at least ignored, as he turns and talks to the camera (you).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no plot, just this drifting, mostly through the 19th century. But it\u2019s an incredible tour and a costume-lover\u2019s dream. At one point the Marquis heads into a ballroom where an orchestra plays for hundreds of dancers and onlookers. After this spectacular ball, the camera watches the guests leave, ultimately moves ahead of the crowd, and exits the museum. Fini<\/em>. How I interpret all this is that the people in the scenes, like Noah\u2019s giraffes and sheep and bluejays, may have led separate, unconnected lives (in this case, over time), but they are all inevitably connected in the arc [!] of Russian history.<\/p>\n

Some reviewers asked whether the film would have received such a positive critical response if it had been made in the usual way, with cuts and edits, since images and scenes accumulate, disconnectedly, without any discernible central point. Roger Ebert\u2019s response was \u201c\u02bbRussian Ark,\u2019 as it stands, is enough. . . . If cinema is sometimes dreamlike, then every edit is an awakening. \u02bbRussian Ark\u2019 spins a daydream made of centuries.\u201d (Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics\u2019 rating: 89%; audience score: 81%).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A combination of incredibly poor planning and the exigencies of our Netflix list in one week produced two arty but, let\u2019s face it, slow-moving movies set in museums [Museum Hours reviewed 10-22]. Russian Ark (trailer), too, had rave reviews from … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Russian Ark (2002)","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[57,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-Ya","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3731,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3730\/revisions\/3731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}