The Films I'm Watching

About two weeks back, I got to watch a brilliant film, Alexander Sokurov's "The Russian Ark". It's brilliant on many levels, though the way it was made stands out: The director shot the whole film in a single shot of about 90 minutes. The film is about Russian history and culture, and showcases the Hermitage Museum in Russia to the world. In the different rooms of the museum, the director staged instances from 300 years of Russian History, and the steady camera operator moved from one room to another, where actors performed their parts. In the film, an invisible time traveler guides us through each of the rooms, accompanied by a French diplomat who had toured Russia at one time in the past.

To think that the film was pulled off in spite of these: the film had to be shot in one take as mentioned and since the museum could permit them only that single day when it would be shot there was little time for multiple tries, the steady camera operator was German, and a translator had to mediate between the director and him, 3000 actors performed their parts in the film, all original artifacts from the museum were used in the film and their safety had to be ensured, a minor acting error on the part of any of the actors or the steady camera operator would have ruined the film. Unbelievable.

The film was shot in the third take, the first two times the shooting having failed after about 10 minutes. Watching the film made me very hopeful, that you could pull off just about anything. The costumes on each of the actors were gorgeous, the acting splendid. Watching the film, I have become more interested in Eastern European cinema, my favourite director is Kryzstof Kieslowski, I love his "Blind Chance". This week I could get hold of a DVD box set of his films from our Library, I just finished "Camera Buff" and "A short story about Love", both have simple stories but such intimate portrayal filled with drama. The latter film inspired a Hindi film called "Ek Choti si love story" that became a scandal.