The amazing gimmick behind "Russian Ark" is this: It is shot in one unbroken 90-minute take. Shooting on digital video made
it technically possible, because DV cameras don't have to be reloaded every 10 minutes the way film cameras do. Persuading the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, to close down for a day so director Aleksandr Sokurov could film there made it logistically possible. Of course, just because a thing can be done doesn't necessarily mean it ought to be done, or that the results will be worthwhile to an audience that doesn't care HOW you made your movie. "Russian Ark" falls under the category of films you respect more than you enjoy. One can be awestruck at the feat Sokurov pulls off in capturing his story in one take, even while occasionally being bored by the story itself. It's more idea than story, but the idea is intriguing. A man through whose eyes we see everything awakens to find himself at the State Hermitage Museum in a former century. As he wanders from room to room, he encounters figures from Russian history such as Catherine the Great and Nicholas II, in addition to art spanning three centuries. Somehow, all these people and things that have been associated with the museum at some point have come to co-exist there now, allowing our narrator to see them all at once. It's reminiscent of the way some people believe God sees time -- not in chronological order, but all laid out before him at once.
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