The victim of a car crash opens his eyes in a dreamlike state to find that he is in 1880's Russia. In a labyrinth of a building the man walks room to room eavesdropping and observing a series of small sequences involving some of the premier characters of Russian history. They are neither important nor seen from beginning to end, but they establish time, place, and the type of story that is about to unfold. The unnamed man meets the Marquis, a man in black with heeled boots--more spirit than man, really--about as lost and confused as our host. A Frenchman by birth and a hater of Russians, the Marquis is surprised to learn that in this new world he speaks perfect Russian and pairs up with The Spy (as the credits refer to him) to explore the fantasy they have been thrust into.
The location turns out to be the State Hermitage Museum and the Marquis, an art historian who despite his utter dislike for things of Russian heritage knows a considerable amount about the paintings, sculptures, and historical figures the two meet along the way, becomes something of a guide for The Spy and for the audience itself. As we travel room by room, corridor by corridor, gallery by gallery, the vampirish historian gives facts and interpretations of the paintings, the museum, and of Russia herself. It is not a documentary, nor is it completely fictionalized. Its conceptualization is something new entirely and really beyond my description.
The logic of the film does not completely work, even by the fantastic standards that its creators have set forth. Both The Spy and the Marquis play the part of the observer, at once being invisible but able to interact, unnoticed at times and chased away at others. They can interfere when they want to, come face to face with others without being seen, and travel through eras without intending to. At one point they are in a room observing art in modern day St. Petersburg with tourists, then stumbling out into a hallway they find themselves looking at Catherine II running about in the snow.
There really is not much plot. Dialogue neither propels the story (what little there is) nor does it create characters of any sort of depth or interest. After the first ten or so minutes, the characters don't even really seem to care that they have been transported in time and have no ideas on how to get back to their own reality. The two merely exist in order to complete the vision of the director. The walk through the building where the witness the trivial events of people like Peter the Great and Anastasia, and discuss a great deal of art in ways that are both very interesting and extremely tedious.
All of this might make for a strange and disjointed film were it not for what I am about to relay now: the entire film, an hour and a half long, over 2000 actors, 33 rooms of the Winter Palace, and three live orchestras was shot in one take. Holy God. The true technical achievement of this film is staggering. The Spy is never seen as the movie is shot from his point of view with a Steadicam, and goes for an uninterrupted 87 minute take. Actors look into the camera as though they were speaking to a real person and move around as though there was a character there. Every mark had to be hit by every one of those extras--lighting cues, sound cues, everything had to be perfect. It is like watching live theater in that there was no room for error in filming, there was no way to edit out mistakes, and if someone did slip up then the entire thing had to be reshot from the very beginning. I have learned that it was indeed shot twice before they successfully completed it the third try. The months of preparation that must have gone into this are awe-inspiring. Unlike live performance greater challenges are presented not only in the making sure that everyone hits their marks at the correct place and time, but the fact that there is only one director and 33 locations with some places holding hundreds of actors, others only one or two--some in completely unexpected areas--makes the organization of the film something of a miracle. Furthermore, in the direction process, not only did the director have to make sure that the cinematographer have to hit all of his marks as The Spy, he also had to make sure that all action that he wanted to film was in the correct place at the correct time, and could be filmed smoothly and naturally as though a person just happened to look at that particular place. There is only one camera so there was no possibility for reaction shots. Everything had to be seen all at once, and that is a feat that brings this movie nearly to level of masterpiece.
The film itself would have been really bad had it not been for this incredible concept and complete disregard for the conventions of film making. There was really no plot or useful dialogue to speak of, but even after the initial shock of the film wore off, I was still mesmerized by what I was witnessing. There is really nothing else like it made, and anything that tries to do this again will be an obvious send-up of it, and I am sure will be almost automatically panned as a worthless copy. This is truly a one-of-a-kind film, will remain so, and absolutely should not be missed by anyone who has any interest in unconventional, avant garde cinema.
4/4
No comments:
Post a Comment