OK...the movie was perfectly filmed. In one impecable shot...But is so booooooooring!!! So what's the point of doing a booooooooring movie in one only shot?
I like many differents kinds of movies but there's one kind that I don't accept: boring movies like this...filmed in one or in one thousend shots.
I'm a history professor and also a published science fiction author. I can tell you what the point is. . .it is a time machine. Some might think it "booooring," so what, there are many of us who sat enthralled by this masterpiece. It is indeed as if a portal in time had been opened for us, a wondrous brief glimpse into a world long lost and we are privileged to step through. The famed single take of the film. Think about it, are their "cut aways," "retakes" differing points of view in our own real lives. Of course not, and I believe that is what the director sought, to have us drift into this dream scape, of perhaps an eternal "Ark" bearing the memories of a Russia lost in the chaos of Revolution and two world wars and by his side walk through history.
If you are bored, go to your local cinema-plex and get your latest fill of gratuitous violence, sex, three second takes and absurdities. If you want to take a leisurely step back into time. . .step aboard the "Russian Ark."
Agreed. This is actually one of the LEAST boring movies I've seen. I remember thinking at the 1-hour mark that I wanted the movie to go on forever. Who woulda thought that a 90-minute single shot would be TOO SHORT?
You can't spell "Godard" without "God"
you just have to sit back and let this movie happen, and you have to be able to appreciate the skill and effort that went into it. I can't imagine co-ordinating this, so that alone makes me interested in it. it's also incredibly beautiful. the last scene is so amazing, everyone coming down the staircase, wow. I've had dreams about that sequence.
sharei dont think all this is fair...i love history and picked this movie out with the purpose to leran more in a new nifty way...but...it kinda failed...TRUE the last scene was amazing ...and i appreciated some scenes with Catherine and Anastasia espc...but overall i did alot of getting up to eat snacks....i was really dissapointed but i can see why so many ppl like it...ya i cant speak russian but i got the feeleign i was missing alot b/c there was so much overlapping conversations! oh well.
shareI don't think this is the kind of movie which will teach you history. I don't think it's even possible to comprehend the movie if you don't know the history and the culture of Russia. When I wrote a paper over this movie first I had to do a who's whom of the characters and the history of certain important works of art. If you don't know the characters background you can't comprehend the movie, Sokurov has put so many layers in to this film its amazing, everything shown has meaning. The people on IMDB who say that you just have to let it overcome you are right in a certain way, but they are missing the true beauty of the film, namely meaning.
I posted, in a separate thread on this movie, a link to the aforementioned research paper. And that one by far doesn't cover every aspect of the film, but read it and then watch the film again, and see how it has changed your perspective.....
"Boring" is a word that never really means much anyway, as it is so subjective. But I would like to say that slow film in general is perhaps an aquired taste. When I first saw Chantal Ackerman's "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" I was squirming throughout the first 30 minutes. But then something happened. Not so much onscreen as in perhaps my own head. It was as if I'd fallen asleep but was wide awake inside the most mysterious dream. I walked out of the theatre afterward with an entirely new perspective on what moving pictures can do. I began seeking out Ackerman's other slow films ("Hotel Monterey" has hardly any action at all, but was gorgeous to me) and then over the years the slower, quieter work of other directors. Some of it was brilliant, some of it not. For me "Russian Ark" is not necessarily a masterpiece of the style, but more like a sumptuous celebration of it.
But I will say that if you are truly bored by a film, there's not much you can do about it. Get up and leave.
That's what I was thinking too - what's so great about this? Are we supposed to enjoy spending an hour and a half with a cantankerous, pompous jerk who spouts "learned" idiocies while wandering through a sumptuous decor? Imagine a 90 minute bus ride next to somebody like that main character/narrator. Thankfully, its just a DVD and the stop button was at hand.
I was quite looking forward to this as I fancy myself as something of a Russophile. I love the music, the language, the wide-open spaces, the rich Russian culture (not to namedrop, but my favorite Russian writers are Anastasy Fet, Isaac Babel and Vladimir Arseniev, so you can see that I actually do like something!)- but this film is just boring, stifling and annoying. Perhaps a film student would appreciate the technique involved, but I don't see the use of someone explaining why this is supposed to be good!(Like with music, it,s a gut-level reaction.) I gave it three chances and didn't get to the end.
Cheers,
The point, is that we are watching a beautiful and brilliant film weaving in and out of russian history seamlessly. A true work of art!
shareI wonder as well what's exactly the point of this movie.
Ok, it's a feat technically and logistically speaking, but besides that, what? Nostalgia for the Czarist times? The most expensive interactive guide to any museum ever made? A subtle but incisive critique on the decadent lifestyle of the Czars?
I'll say it's a subtle but incisive ctritique on the decadence of the Imperial Russia and its despotic leaders who lived surrounded by the finest, most exotic and luxurious goods while 90% of the russian population were literally starving to death.
But I might be wrong. For other people "Russian Ark" may represent an elegiac poem to the "shiny and glorious" days of the Czars.
who knows...
...what's the point of doing a...movie in one only shot?Sokurov himself has been quoted as saying something along the lines of the "one take" was a 'tool' not a 'gimmick'. So diving down one level, the question becomes "should I really take him at his word?" Well, as I don't have "inside" information, I don't really know for sure.
Chuck 526, I just wanted to say that I've really enjoyed reading your posts in the many threads about "Russian Ark". I happened to catch it on TCM just now, and, as I often do, I immediately went to IMDB after it was over and started poring through the trivia, cast and crew, and user posts.
You are definitely a voice of reason and intelligence, and I love the way you call people out when they leave a comment with a significant claim and no evidence to back it up.
I have to get hold of the DVD and watch the making of feature. Unfortunately when I was watching "Russian Ark" on TCM my patience flagged and I changed the channel several times, so I definitely need to watch it again.
Anyway, cheers and thanks for the posts.
"If that was a nod, nod."
You didn't understand the film, and if you need someone to explain it to you, you can't understand it.
shareI am going to provide a contrarian point of view. I, too, love history, art and architecture and am also familiar with the various currents of thought about Russian being part European and part Asiatic and wholly singular.
With that in mind, I thought the film failed, at least for non -Russian speakers, because of both technical aspects and the inanity of the "European".
The lighting on the paintings, themselves, turned them all into background pieces. Only the El Greco was shown to good effect. Perhaps that was Sokurov's way of saying that it is the only first rate piece in the museum. He did say that the Italian art was second rate, though I would argue that the Giorgione Giuditta con la testa di Oloferne is a world class piece. Rembrant's Young woman trying on earrings is in his top rank, as well.
The European refuses to go to the 20th century, in the end, so maybe that's why the great Matisse works are also excluded.
So, the art is poorly shown and the Hermitage is, today, an art museum.
Sokurov tries to show the Hermitage as a living palace. He could have chosen to do this using set pieces, with compelling dialog and a traditional story structure. His choice, however, was to present it as "slice of life". At least, slice of royal and noble life. Perhaps, if I had been able to understand what everybody was saying, this would have been interesting, but, with sub-titles, to a non native speaker, what came out was some sense of ennui and wistful longing for a bygone era. However, walking through echoey halls with random conversation in real life, is excruciatingly dull. That's why you look at the art, sip a drink or have a conversation that has a point. So, like many people, I found the film boring (a word I rarely use). I realize that this is a personal opinion, but the structural failures and contextless meandering about the halls added to my desire for the movie to end.
And, finally, I found the "European" to be a snorting, distasteful character.
Obviously a Trump voter.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty.