Russian Ark (2002) – Review

After seeing the fantastic (it ended up in my top 10 of the year) Victoria last year, a two hour long movie shot in one take, I was very interested to see this movie which has been shot in the same way. According to IMDB: “2000 cast members, 3 orchestras, 33 rooms, 300 years, all in one take”. I had bought the film a couple of years ago after the rave review, but never bothered taking the plastic of and actually watching it. So a good reason to add it to my blindspot list for this year as it would make sure I’d finally come around to seeing the movie.

It has been filmed in the Russian Hermitage museum, which had to be closed down in order to achieve this feat. The crew had a single day to capture it all. During 99 minutes the viewer witnesses a ghost roaming the museum and who sometimes is shown around by Marquis de Custine, a French traveller. It tries to show 300 years of Russian history.

 Unfortunately the end result is a film which didn’t succeed in capturing my imagination for a moment. Even though the location and the wardrobe are beautiful and I think it is impressive this was all done in one take, it wasn’t enough for me to feel anything other than being bored. Russian Ark has no plot and no character development. The actors never felt convincing and as there isn’t any focus storywise the camera just roams around. Unfortunately this is one of those movies which I simply can not appreciate for what it is and after a while I started watching it at double speel because it was a challenge to keep watching. Despite the fact that the movie received a lot of glowing review it simply wasn’t for me.