A friend's review of Russian Ark

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(He only had missed that it was shot in digital on a harddrive...)
I saw the Russian Ark. At first I found the two guides confusing, a cumbersome Russian conceit, but in time I came to realize the contemporary as the audience and the French diplomat as the historian/guide. The inconsistency of their visibile presence to the various Hermitage characters provided a little Russian mysticism to the piece, as if it were sprinkled with a fairy dust made from the crushed jewels of a czarina. Okay by me, once I got it.
Did you notice how grainy the image was at the beginning in the dark entranceway? This is not a focus issue but a high film speed emulsion effect. It did not repeat after the actors arrived in the better illuminated interior. As the film constantly rolled I wondered if the director had seamless film but with a high speed emulsion for the low light condition which transitioned to lower speed chemicals at a certain time point to insure better image density, color saturation etc. in the well lighted Hermitage. What do you think about this? Too goofy or a possiblity? More of his genius?
The conversation with the modern woman dancing/audibilizing in front of a painting was fascinating. The diplomat, charmed by her eccentric individualism or artisic fusion (modernity in either case) asks to participate with her. When he does they embrace in a balletic dance posture, a sculpture of the past and present. She suddenly departs. Remember the diplomat previously remarked that nobody looks to the past, everyone looks forward to the future (I'm paraphrasing)Yet in the end a profound preference, aesthetic or sentimentalism causes him to stay at the ball, in the past, his time. His heart overrules his intellect or curiosity for the future. Do you feel this way about our time? If you don't .........................
The same dynamic occurs around the fearful-acting young man who lingers in the area of the portrait of Saints Peter and Paul. The diplomat is intimidating in his puzzlement over his apparent loss or failure to acquire a religious faith, and, more philosophically, why man would choose to existentially cower in its absence. He is cautioned by the modern companion not to scare the person because he is already scared. Interesting. Deconstruction can do a job on a person and then leave him to his space.
The ball scene is magnificent. I remember years ago the film Titanic was heralded as the quintessential cinematic depiction of the violent end of an age (aristocracy, robber barons, class system). But to witness the doomed social and sartorial glories made possible by the excesses of monarchy simply and beautifully disperse into the night of history, softly murmuring sweet satieties, the high pleasures of an even higher entertainment and the relaxed peripatetic social engagement that inevitably followed in its wake, rather than view the Czar and his family at the mercy of the mobs and falling to the firing squads in the last century's ugly revolution, was breathtaking in its sublimity and poignancy, a film worthy of a place in the Hermitage alongside the other visual masterpieces. This is not a cinematic Guernica. Sic transit gloria mundi was never so gloriously and beautifully depicted.
Finally I haven't seen so many extras since Cleopatra. I hope the economics of film making in the old Union permit other grand costumed epics to arrive at our shores. What an unexpected treat!!
Gerry Cushing

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Topic - A friend's review of Russian Ark - clarkjohnsen 08:18:06 03/25/03 (5)

I'm guessing the problem is not the original - Bob Casner 13:57:19 03/27/03 (2)

It looked pretty good in my theatre... nt - clarkjohnsen 13:07:03 03/28/03 (1)

Not even close here... - Bob Casner 15:28:26 03/28/03 (0)

Re: A friend's review of Russian Ark - Victor Khomenko 13:36:21 03/25/03 (1)

But the fact is... - clarkjohnsen 09:05:23 03/26/03 (0)

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