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A Visit to the Museum: Aleksandr Sokurov's Russian Ark and the Framing of the Eternal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Tim Harte
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Abstract

In this close analysis of Aleksandr Sokurov's 2002 film Russkii kovcheg (Russian ark), Tim Harte explores the interplay between the medium of painting and cinema in this unprecedented ninety-minute single-shot film set in the grand halls and galleries of the Hermitage Museum. As Harte argues, the film's unique premise and setting allow Sokurov to convey how the museum, its art and history, and subsequently cinema can affirm a nation's culture, transporting die past ever so evocatively into the present in order to sustain culture's vitality. Throughout Sokurov's ninety-minute single-shot fusion of Western art and Russian history, a continual emphasis on the image of the frame prevails, with the frame constituting an important artistic and metaphysical threshold for the filmmaker. Constandy moving through the ubiquitous frames, Sokurov establishes his own cinematic rendering of culture's eternal essence.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , Spring 2005 , pp. 43 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2005

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References

1. Marquis Astolphe de Custine, La Russie en 1839, 4 vols. (Paris, 1843).

2. Noteworthy criticism on Russian Ark includes: Birgit Beumers, “And the Ship Sails On … Sokurov's Ghostly Ark of Russia's Past,” Rossica 9 (Winter 2003): 56-59; Christie, Ian, “The Civilizing Russian,” Sight and Sound 13, no. 4 (2003): 10-11 Google Scholar; and Hoberman, J., “And the Ship Sails On,” Film Comment 38, no. 5 (September/October 2002): 54.Google Scholar

3. See, for instance, Kachurin, Pamela and Zitser, Ernest A., “After the Deluge: Russian Ark and the (Ab)uses of History,” NewsNet 43, no. 4 (August 2003): 17–22.Google Scholar Kachurin and Zitser, as the title of their article suggests, criticize the political and ideological treatment of history in Sokurov's film.

4. I am reminded here of a statement by the film critic and essayist Phillip Lopate on earlier Sokurov work and its underlying mysticism: “In interviews he talks all kinds of reactionary, Russian-mystic nonsense; but the man makes beautiful movies… . Does it take having a cockamamie philosophy these days to make rigorous, visionary films?” Lopate, Phillip, Totally, Tenderly, Tragically: Essays and Criticism from a Lifelong Love Affair with the Movies (New York, 1998), 337-38.Google Scholar

5. Sokurov, Aleksandr, director, Russian Ark, DVD (2002; New York, N.Y.: Wellspring, 2003).Google Scholar All English translations from the soundtrack are mine.

6. Leach, Edmund, Rethinking Anthropology (London, 1961), 125.Google Scholar Cited by Duncan, Carol, Civilizing Ritual: Inside Public Art Museums (London, 1995), 17.Google Scholar

7. Ortega y Gasset, José, “Meditations on the Frame,” trans. Ball, Andrea, in Brettell, Richard and Starling, Steven, The Art of the Edge: European Frames 1300-1900 (Chicago, 1986), 24.Google Scholar

8. Ernst, Wolfgang, “Framing the Fragment: Archeology, Art, Museum,” in Duro, Paul, ed., The Rhetoric of the Frame: Essays on the Boundaries of the Artwork (Cambridge, Eng., 1996), 115.Google Scholar

9. Alexander Sokurov, “In One Breath,” Hermitage Bridge Studio, http://www.russianark.spb.ru/eng/film_socurov.html (last consulted 7 October 2004).

10. In addition, the fact that Sokurov filmed Russian Ark on 23 December, the shortest day of the year, means that the filmmaker and his cameraman had only approximately four hours of St. Petersburg daylight with which to work.

11. Sokurov's preoccupation with mortality and history is particularly evident in the recent films Moloch and Taurus, which explore the final, waning days in the lives of Hitler and Lenin, respectively. In other films, Sokurov similarly investigates the delicate, liminal state between life and death that arises as so many of his characters confront mortality (like the son and his dying mother in Sokurov's 1997 Mother and Son).

12. Iampolski, Mikhail, “Representation, Mimicry, Death,” in Beumers, Birgit, ed., Russia on Reels: The Russian Idea in Post-Soviet Cinema (London, 1999), 138.Google Scholar

13. The fact that Stanzione's Cleopatra was acquired by the Hermitage in 1968 further accentuates the film's anachronistic mix of art and action.

14. For a detailed discussion of a similar interplay between live-action and the static canvas in Sokurov's work, particularly Robert: A Fortunate Life, see Iampolski, “Representation,” 128.

15. Only for a brief moment (approximately one second) are the frame and the human finger not visible in this close up of Tintoretto's painting. Otherwise, part of the frame is always visible.

16. Aleksandr Sokurov, “Izobrazhenie i montazh,” Iskusstvo kino, 1997, no. 12:111. In this interview, Sokurov discusses the role of painting in Mother and Son.

17. Sokurov, “Tvorcheskii alfavit,” Kinograf, 1997, no. 3:88. Also cited in Iampolski, “Representation,” 143.

18. This scene alludes to the cannibalism that occurred in Leningrad during the 900- day blockade of the city. The museum-worker, looking well fed (as the Marquis himself notes), approaches the French visitor as if sizing him up for consumption.

19. Duncan, Civilizing Ritual, 12.