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Custine's Letters from Russia are to Sokurov's homeland as Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America is to the United States - although the book might well have been titled Despotism in Russia. Banned several times, both before and after the Russian revolution, Custine's book has been praised by figures as various as the pioneer socialist Alexander Herzen and cold warrior George Kennan. (It has also been recognized as a prescient account of Russian postmodernism: "The Russians have everything in name and nothing in reality." The very nation is but 'a puff placarded upon Europe.")
Sokurov presents Custine as a supercilious fop - but the Frenchman's ongoing critique colors the movie. The narrator mildly contradicts (and at times, defensively corrects) the caustic marquis's remarks on Russia's inability to grasp European culture as they wander together through history's backstage, glimpsing Peter the Great beating one of his generals or pausing to observe Catherine II watching a performance in rehearsal (and then frantically searching for a pot to piss in). The marquis meets the Hermitage's current director, Mikhail Piotrovski, and complains that there's an aroma of formaldehyde. Then, eluding an attempt to close the museum on them, Custine and the narrator stumble upon a royal presentation-emissaries sent by the Shah of Persia to apologize to Nicholas I for the murder of Russian diplomats-and catch a glimpse of Alexander III en famille.
As the centuries wash through these splendid corridors, Sokurov's sinuous historical pageant suggests two Marxist makers of historical spectacles-recalling in its stately, fluid choreography the allegories of Miklós Jancsó and in its lavishly authentic mise-en-scène the spectacles of Luchino Visconti. But, like many of the most remarkable motion pictures of the past few years, this extreme film could only have been made with digital technology.
The longest sequence shot in history builds in intensity towards a suitably mind-boggling finale - evoking the Hermitage's last royal ball in 1913. For eight minutes or so, the camera circles around and threads between hundreds of courtiers dancing the mazurka in the huge Nicholas Hall. (The marquis joins in, just as he had in 1839.) Sokurov can be forgiven for the inscribed applause as the music ends. There's an uncanny suggestion of some midnight affair aboard the Titanic as the now melancholy Custine declines to abandon ship. In a final flourish, Sokurov's camera dances behind and - coming off the grand staircase - pirouettes ahead to gaze back at the exiting throng.
Russian Ark was accorded a mixed reception when it had its world premiere (in digital projection) at Cannes. Taken by some as an exercise in czarist nostalgia, the movie is far more concerned with evoking Russia's sense of national unreality. This chunk of the space-time continuum is hauntingly insubstantial. Perhaps the metaphor of the ark derives from Custine as well. Pondering the imperial capital's tenuous relation with the sea, the marquis had a vision of flooded St. Petersburg sinking back into marshland. The digital fog that rolls around the Hermitage ghost ship shrouds Sokurov's ambiguous declaration, "We are destined to sail forever·. To live forever." -J. Hoberman
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© 2002 by J. Hoberman
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