Russian Ark (2002)

Saw Russian Ark (2002), a dreamlike film which seems to be most famous for its technical achievement: that despite being about 1.5 hours long, it was filmed in one continuous shot (!)  Apart from this however, it is interesting and dreamy, and shot in a Russian museum (the Hermitage I think?) which is worth the time itself.

There is not a lot of plot.  The film is narrated by a person who does not know where they are or how they got there.  This feels like some post-modern 4th wall breaking to me.  They could just have a third-person omniscient eye for the camera, as most conventional films do, however they draw attention to the fact that someone is here with a camera but then, perversely, they do not actually explain how they got to be there.  I think this sort of primes us to think outside the box for this film, to accept the sight of Queen Catherine teaching her children how to bow, only to be interrupted by some passing tourists.

We also follow a man in black who the narrator thinks is French.  This man is sarcastic and accuses Russians of having no creativity, no sense of identity, and no culture.  He makes fun of the paintings on display (declaring they stink of formaldehyde) and bullies a blind woman.  He's fairly unpleasant, but more fun to watch than the ghosts (?) of Russia's past.

The film's themes revolve around the continuous thread of history and of our lives.  In this way, the unusual technical achievement of having no cuts in the film reinforces this notion of continuity and flow.  We live our own lives, after all, without the help of an editor.  And the same way, our nations and the society must live continuously, with no breaks or cuts.

The clashing historical periods suggest the past "living" alongside the present (a particularly potent metaphor given that we're filming inside of a museum.)  However the narrator and the French man are usually invisible to the folks from the past, suggesting something ghostly going on.  An afterlife?  A state of being outside of time?

The film is a bit of a drag at parts, particularly during a hypnotic closing dance sequence (and be aware: "hypnotic" is a kind way of saying "monotonous") but it has a dreamy, ethereal, haunting quality to it, which somewhat makes up for this.  This film is perhaps not one of my favorites, but going into it, I was worried it was a one-trick pony (and to be honest, I don't really care about continuous shots) and it is much more than that.