It is actually when I sat to write a overall negative comment on the movie, that I possibly saw "behind the frames" and perceived what Sokurov's real purpose was. But maybe I am seeing too much for a production which was originally meant to keep to clichés and stereotypes, in order to make the viewer's life easier. What is really St Petersburg? The title suggests that the Hermitage is an "ark" of Russian culture. But what do we see in it? El Greco and Rubens, Rembrandt and Van Dyck, a somewhat rich, but chaotically arranged exposition, French porcelain, Italian-style musicians, European uniforms, and in between the furtive image of one Pushkin, few bars of one Glinka, a couple of wax figures of emperors and empresses. What exactly are we supposed to admire in the Hermitage? That it was built in Classicizing style, that the courtiers were behaving like real nobles, that the Russian emperors had manners and that Persian ambassadors were received in spacious, gilded and marble-covered halls? Are we expected to be "amazed" by the richness of modern Russia's autocrat, or are we expected to sympathize with the hollowness of their modernized culture which remained an imitation of Western creativity which imitation the invented, and somewhat annoying "French aristocrat" in the movie estimates low and even derides? The dialogs that the Westerner has with particular visitors to the gallery possibly points to Sokurov's answer -that El Greco and Titian and Raphael do not belong only to the cultures which formed them and inspired their work, but to the cultures where their works have been reevaluated and admired in new ways for new purposes. The Russian Ark thus may be understood as the way for the imperial Russian capital to preserve, and give new sense to the great achievements of the 18th and 19th centuries in France, Italy, the Low Lands or Germany... Instead of pursuing in this direction, Sokurov decided to mind-boggle us with embassies' receptions, imperial lunches, and walks through the snow... Rather disappointing.
Review of Russian Ark
