"Russian Ark" and "Sleeping Beauty"

[Paul Parish]

There must be a Russian Ark thread already, I just can't find it....

Just rented the movie, am STUNNED by it -- especially the final scene in the ballroom, with Gergiev himself conducting the mazurka from "A life for the Tsar" (Glinka) and the Mariinsky orchestra playing it and 600 dancers dancing it, SO BEAUTIFULLY -- it looks enough like the court doing the mazurka in Swan Lake to make my head spin --

But the WHOLE way the movie uses the Winter Palace, with as a guide a French diplomat who starts out by criticizing the Russians for copying Versailles and by the end in love with the place and convinced that this place IS another Versailles -- well, he doesn't say so, but his emotions have completely changed, by the end of the movie he is Russian, and dancing the mazurka with Pushkin's wife (who's been fighting with Pushkin all evening, like Olga did with Lensky).....

I haven't read much that's thoughtful about Russian Ark; there's been plenty that's respectful, so I finally got around to watching it -- but most of what I've seen/heard has been about it's being shot in one single take, which is not by any means what's interesting about the movie.... What's GREAT is the fantasy Sokurov's brought to life using all these techniques.

Somehow the whole project puts me in mind of Petipa -- the scale, the detail, the crowds, the geometry, the alternating of small groups and large, the hierarchy of many nations within an empire, the processions and pageantry, the episodic intensifications, and in particular the heightened interest in entrances, the contrasting tempi, the creation of a sense of place, and the BEAUTY of it all, and how much that beauty matters.

[atm711]

Thanks for the reminder, Paul. This is one I wanted to see but somehow got away. I just requested it from the library.

[rg]

i think this has been mentioned before, but if not, the scene with rembrandt's danae includes alla ospenko as the woman speaking about the painting and taking the pose of the danae's hand/arm.

also the marquis who more or less leads the camera through the winter palace rooms is the marquis de coustine, a frenchman who wrote a brilliant travel memoir of visiting russia during the era of nicholas I, it's been translated into english several times (and several other languages too i assume - being long banned in russia b/c of the often unflattering depiction of the autocracy) and published in paperback (most recently by doubleday) as EMPIRE OF THE TSAR (used copies should still be around) - no russophile should miss this fine piece of writing by an outsider on the russian empire in the 1830s. it includes a good deal of description of imperial fetes.

i suspect by now there are a number of web-site references to this film.

[Leigh Witchel]

It took some searching to find anything on Ballet Talk. Ark only has three letters, so you can't search for it - I searched for Hermitage instead!

Here are two relevant threads:

Russian Ark

Alla Osipenko

[Paul Parish]

THanks Leigh -- and thanks rg, I see it was you who started the original thread, not surprised...

The DVD of Russian Ark also has "extras" -- including a short documentary about hte WInter Palace that makes you FEEL the presence of the water all around it, the god-like scope of the whole Palast, the powerful resemblance to Versailles, and the devotion of the many people who've worked there under the Soviets (which must parallel exactly the devotion that underlay all the intrigues of those at the Kirov Theater, the wig-makers and the dancers and the dressers and everybody devoted to keeping the beautiful dances from losing their perfect details), the incredible tenacity of the people as they held out against the 900-day siege during WW2, the ways they protected the paintings during that time when htey were freezing and any old piece of wood that could be burned for heat was nearly priceless -- you can see how they fought to preserve these collective treasures like they'd fight for their souls, if you have to give up your life or your soul, which would it be?

That last may seem far-fetched, but since the whole of "Russian Ark" is an apparition, and the "eyes" we see it through are those of a man who's just died in some accident and doesn't know WHERE he is but is constantly asking questions of the visible ghost of the Marquis de Coustine (who finds the young soul's curiosity unamusing), it's ALL about the soul of RUssia -- the museum is like the Ark, NOAH's Ark, which rode out the flood) the long tracking shot is almost like the Tibetan Book of the Dead --it's a guide to the soul showing the way to the new home....

[Mireille]

Here is the Russian Ark's official website:

http://www.russianark.ru/eng/

And Glinka's Separation is divinely played...

[Pamela Moberg]

It is an extraordinarily beautiful movie - like nothing else one has ever seen. I felt moved almost to tears thinking of that once I had walked through these large rooms.

What amazes me is that it was actually shown in a movie theater here and ran for a few weeks - that in a small town...

[redbookish]

What is wonderful is to see the film, then spend a day (or three) in the Hermitage, and then see the film again. Last time I was in the Hermitage I'd just seen the DVD of the film, and it added even more ghosts to those wonderful rooms. I really recommend watching the film again (or seeing it on DVD) if you're going to Petersburg.

[drb]

If you click Amazon at the top of this page you will find The Russian Ark available in both DVD (I think three are left) and VHS.

[walboi]

Just rented the movie, am STUNNED by it -- especially the final scene in the ballroom, with  Gergiev himself conducting the mazurka from "A life for the Tsar" (Glinka) and the Mariinsky orchestra playing it and 600 dancers dancing it, SO BEAUTIFULLY -- it looks enough like the court doing the mazurka in Swan Lake to make my head spin.

I saw the film so many times that is has become part of my dreams for the last 6 months or so. The waltzing, the rousing manner in which the orchestra plays. Everything about it is strange, dreamy, so out of focus.....I saw it just minutes ago and I am sure I will see it in my dreams again!

Walboi

[ViolinConcerto]

I saw it when it came out, and was enthralled. I recently purchased the DVD -- haven't had time to watch it, but am eagerly anticipating it. Think I'll read the entire thread cited above first. Just reading these 10 posts has been very informative. Thanks, all of you!

[Leigh Witchel]

I'm here in St. Petersburg now, so I wanted to bump up this thread (I hope Paul will see it!)

I saw the film a few days before I left for Russia and I think I shall go to the Hermitage on Wednesday morning before I leave - call me a wimp but I can't take a full day in a museum. I go into museum coma. I'd rather hope to return someday than try and get it all in.

What I got from both the movie and just my sense of the city so far (and the ballets at the Mariinsky) is that Americans have some basic simple understanding of our relationship with the USSR. It's based on a balance and rivalry of power that is less emotionally complex. Russia's relationship to Europe and the East as touched on in Russian Ark - boy, we don't understand that instinctively at all. The conflict is cultural, and as the director says in one of the interview tracks in Russian Ark, is one of the main points of the movie.

Add to that watching the ballets at the Mariinsky, La Bayadere or The Magic Nut and watch Russia looking East and its fascination (perhaps even still) with Orientalism - but not at all like Europe or the United States. India isn't Russia's neighbor, but Persia and Turkey are.

It's a very heady brew and I haven't even begun to tackle it.

[carbro]

Add to that watching the ballets at the Mariinsky, La Bayadere or The Magic Nut and watch Russia looking East and its fascination (perhaps even still) with Orientalism - but not at all like Europe or the United States. India isn't Russia's neighbor, but Persia and Turkey are.

This is an important distinction I'd not considered. I had always presumed that Bayadere and Corsaire shared the Romantic Era's taste for the exotic, Don Q and Paquita providing a qualitatively similar "distant lands" fantasy. You open up a whole new perspective on that "fascination with Orientalism."

Thanks, Leigh, and I look forward to more!

[sandik]

I had always presumed that Bayadere and Corsaire shared the Romantic Era's taste for the exotic, Don Q and Paquita providing a qualitatively similar "distant lands" fantasy. You open up a whole new perspective on that "fascination with Orientalism."

Remember that Petipa was raised in the Paris Opera version of Romanticism, and brought those experiences with him to Russia.

[Leigh Witchel]

But there's a twist on it here, Sandi. I hope I'm not opening up a can of worms, but I'd say (from only instinct and no research, more knowledgeable people please chime in!) the equivalent is the ambivalent relationship the US has with Mexico. It's not just romantic or exotic - it's your frontier.

[Paul Parish]

Leigh, I think you're really onto something. The "Orient" wasn't far-away; it was next door, or already at home.

You mention Persia -- probably even more important were the Turkic peoples who were already within the borders of the empire.

In War and Peace, Natasha's mother, the countess Rostova, has an "Asiatic" look -- the sharp black eyebrows, the striking cheekbones. She is aristocracy of course -- but she's NOT European stock. And she's a totally incorporated, centrally important, deeply loved person in the book. She's not as lovable as Natasha's father, but that's because he'd give the ranch away to anybody with a sob story and she's always having to rein him in, and she won't let Nikolai marry Sonya because the family needs a major alliance -- but she HATES herself for having to do it, she's in the middle of it, the mother of them all and in no way alien or foreign.....

[bart]

Re Countess Tolstoi: could this be the Tartar connection? I think of Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible for images of a cruel, bloody, overpoweringly alien Tartar miitary occupation of the pure, Christian (and blond!!) Russian people. There was definitely a Tartar (Mongol plus others) genetic legacy in Russia. Nureyve was Tartar. Many Russian families became vaguely proud of "Tartar" blood acquired in the distant past.

I don't know about Corsaire, though. This is far from my favorite story ballet, but it seems to have an awful lot in common with the earlier comic stereotypes that Rossini mined in L'Italiana in Algeri and Il Turco in Italia. Even Raymonda has a story whose roots are Italian/French.

Is there something distinctively "Russian" in the way that Russian ballet approached or developed these stories, as compared with Western Europeans? Or are the similarities with western Europe stronger?

[ViolinConcerto]

Add to that watching the ballets at the Mariinsky, La Bayadere or The Magic Nut and watch Russia looking East and its fascination (perhaps even still) with Orientalism - but not at all like Europe or the United States. India isn't Russia's neighbor, but Persia and Turkey are.

Remember also Fokine's ballets (first done for the Maryinsky and several benefits) that Diaghilev brought to Europe -- nearly all exotica and reflecting the abovementioned fascination with Orientalism: "Sheherazade," "Polovtsian Dances," even "Firebird," "Le Dieu Bleu," "Le Coq d'Or," etc.

[omshanti]

Re Countess Tolstoi: could this be the Tartar connection? I think of Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible for images of a cruel, bloody, overpoweringly alien Tartar miitary occupation of the pure, Christian (and blond!!) Russian people. There was definitely a Tartar (Mongol plus others) genetic legacy in Russia. Nureyve was Tartar. Many Russian families became vaguely proud of "Tartar" blood acquired in the distant past.

I do not think it is possible to use the word pure so simply for the Russians before the Tartar Mongolian influence. They originaly started as a mix anyway ,of a Germanic scandinavian tribe (Vikings) and a Slavic tribe that lived in present day Ukraine which was mostly inhabited by Persian tribes at the time. They adapted the name Russ from the Germanic side and the language from the Slavic side. Christianity had nothing to do with them yet. And then there were the Romans, Greek( who brought christianity), Majjars, Huns, Bulghars, Chinghis khan , that influenced them before Tartars. Tartars were already influenced by the Greek, Persians, Arabs before they reached Russians. And as the Russian empire started to expand its territory they included that immense flat land of Euroasian continenet which was the ancient crossroad of numerous horse riding tribes from east , west, south and north. So maybe this back ground has some effect on ballet in Russia as well as the psyche of Russian people..

I think one thing that is distinctively Russian is their way of approaching folk and national dances in ballet.