Sukarov made the most of his single day. After months of careful planning and delicate rehearsal, the movie was captured on the third attempt. In the end, Sukarov created a masterpiece breath-taking in size and scope. The film enchants viewers with its lavish balls, graceful princesses, stately tsars and magnificent backdrop. Priceless paintings and sculptures heighten the aesthetic appeal of the story.

While the artistry of the film gains immediate recognition, the graceful story of The Russian Ark is more subtle than the backdrop. After the unnamed Russian director wakes from a mysterious accident, he finds himself in the midst of a group of 18th Century ladies and officers, searching for a party inside. The director, apparently invisible to the group, follows after the lively bunch and ends up in the winding basement halls of Peter the Great’s Winter Palace. Our unseen cameraman shortly comes upon a figure who acknowledges his presence: a French Marquis. The Marquis becomes his companion and guide, as the two set upon their meandering journey.

One film critic, Henry Sheehan, described the journey perfectly. “Russian Ark doesn’t act so much as it muses: on art, on history, on Russia versus the West, on politics.” Musing together on these wide-ranging subjects the Marquis and the director seldom reach conclusions. The Marquis, quick to point out European excellence, continually stresses the debt Russia owes to the West. The Rafael room, he emphasizes, was copied from the Vatican. A skilled orchestra, he observes, must be Italian. The director sometimes replies and argues, but often he simply turns his camera and glides away to yet another scene of Russian beauty and character. He captures the personality of Catherine the Great, the will of Peter the Great, the statecraft of Nicholas I, and the delicate Russian beauty of the last Romanov daughters. He also reveals some painful moments of Russia’s past. At one point, the Marquis carelessly opens the door to the World War II siege of Leningrad. The Marquis and director glimpse a world suddenly gray and harsh and they meet a worker speaking of death and destruction. The Marquis doesn’t want to hear the tale of Nazi Germany’s 900-day siege; he doesn’t want to know about over a million Russian deaths in the starved city. He wants to carry on to the final ball.

Tilman Buttner - the man behind the camera

Some have asked about the relevance of The Russian Ark. If it were not filmed in one shot, would we really take notice of such a meandering and inconclusive film? But I argue that this film wanders, in 96 minutes, through a reverie of Russian history and thinking that remains poignant today. The juxtaposition of the siege of Leningrad and the grand balls of the tsars, the tragic and the superfluous in the same palace, is a message for Russia today. Russia is a land of contradictions. As President Putin recently told world leaders at the G-8 summit, Russia is still carving her own path in this world. The journey might not make sense to the European Marquis who keeps searching for the West in Russia, but Russia is simply continuing her historic dance between tragedy and beauty.

Alicia Hoffer is a student at Seattle Pacific University and a summer intern with Discovery Institute.