...but do we watch films for their technical accomplishments? The director of "Russian Ark" decided of his free will to put a severe technical limitation on his work - namely, as everyone knows by now, to shoot the whole film in one take. Of course, other artists work within the more-or-less self-imposed confines of their particular art: the filmmakers of the Dogme movement resigned from artificial lighting and sound; poets, at least the classical ones, imposed on themselves the rules of rhyme and rhythm; and let us not forget the people who make sailing ships in glass bottles as well as writers who write whole books without using the letter "e" (actually, I think it was just a short story and the writer was either Raymond Queneau or Georges Perec). Undoubtedly you can see that I am dragging the argument ad absurdum. It is ironic that the director Sokurov claimed that he did not want to be commended for technical accomplishment. Well, I think that the film could have been much better if it was made more traditionally - the inherent rhythm of the story, going through 22 different rooms and scenes, cannot be ignored even in the continuous take and Sokurov used some "dirty" tricks, such as black curtains covering the technical going-ons behind and zooming on a person's hands and gloves for no apparent artistic reason. And the film might even have been cheaper if filmed traditionally: there would be no need for thousands of extras and thousands of costumes - they could have been reused in different scenes. And obviously there would be no need for 22 assistant directors and hundreds of supporting
personnel, such as make-up, prop, or lighting people. After this criticism, I have to say that I still liked what I saw, mostly due to the opulent beauty of the production, an incredible camera work and the fluid surreal atmospere ("Russian Ark" is, after all, a sophisticated ghost story, is it not?). I only think that the 300 hundred years of Russian history deserved better: I would suggest a slightly more conventional technical approach and longer time - perhaps something like the 7 1/2 hour "Satantango" (1994) of Bela Tarr or the 9 1/2 hour "Shoah" (1985) of Claude Lanzmann...
personnel, such as make-up, prop, or lighting people. After this criticism, I have to say that I still liked what I saw, mostly due to the opulent beauty of the production, an incredible camera work and the fluid surreal atmospere ("Russian Ark" is, after all, a sophisticated ghost story, is it not?). I only think that the 300 hundred years of Russian history deserved better: I would suggest a slightly more conventional technical approach and longer time - perhaps something like the 7 1/2 hour "Satantango" (1994) of Bela Tarr or the 9 1/2 hour "Shoah" (1985) of Claude Lanzmann...
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