Synopsis
A ghost and a French marquis wander through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, encountering scenes from many different periods of its history.
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Cast
- Sergei DreidenThe Stranger (The Marquis de Custine)
- Mariya KuznetsovaCatherine The Great
- Leonid MozgovoyThe Spy
- Mikhail PiotrovskySelf (Hermitage Director)
- David GiorgobianiOrbeli
- Aleksandr ChabanBoris Piotrovsky
- Lev EliseevSelf
- Oleg KhmelnitskySelf
- Alla OsipenkoSelf
- Artyom StrelnikovTalented Boy
Recommendations
- 100
Time
A coda that will have the movie's audience gasping in exhilarated exhaustion, whispering astonished gratitude to Sokurov for having created vigorous art out of 21st century video technique and asking themselves, "What's the Russian word for Wow!?" - 100
Washington Post
Dramatically, this is something of a waking dream. - 100
Chicago Sun-Times
The film is a glorious experience to witness, not least because, knowing the technique and understanding how much depends on every moment, we almost hold our breath. - 100
L.A. Weekly
High art, low comedy, hard labor and royal prerogative are here thrown together in an elegant unity, a breathtaking demonstration of Russian cinematic -- hence artistic -- brilliance. - 90
Variety
Seems destined to go down in film history as a technical tour de force. - 88
Miami Herald
Even in its most tedious scenes, Russian Ark is mesmerizing. - 83
Entertainment Weekly
It was only with the advent of digital technology that the notion of an entire film done in a single take became possible. Mike Figgis got there first with ''Time Code,'' and now the Russian director Alexander Sokurov has brought off a comparably startling feat with Russian Ark. - 80
Chicago Reader
The problem with these feats is that they threaten to overwhelm the film's content, both as complex historical commentary and as aesthetic and theoretical gesture.
