FILM REVIEW: RUSSIAN ARK by Alexander Sokurov

Part historical renactment, part national/cultural nostalgia, part "12 Monkeys", and half boring. I am not quite sure what the real life significance of this film will be for the world at large or for modern-day Russians. The films' anti-plot heavy story is of a faceless & time -traveling-21st-century-filmmaker (a' la 24P), and a former Italian (Renaissance) diplomat / would be (untrustworthy) narrator (and senile/mad sensualist) --"the part of an observant, intelligent and atrabilious Marquis Astolf De Kustin"-- when the two meet after they are both suddenly transported in time and space to the Winter Palace In St. Petersburg in 18th Century, Russia. After viewing the film I was left with a glazed and slightly enlightend sensation. The - 'happening'-esque tone of this movie, how a dream can feel flimsy, is a little too fake for my tastes, (plus, civil war renactors frighten me). Tonight I still feel somewhat perplexed by this film.

Russian History Rocks!!!, but this film is not history channel faire and is rather more like a structuralist take on classical art and the culture of liesure and decadance of Russian royalty. In this way it could be said that this film comments on 'Empire' itself -leaving some valuable nourishment especially for todays world. Many real life Russians, some plotical, portray themselves as this film expounds multiple layers of time, reality and documen.

Mindbending.