Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli

FLOATING ON THE BORDERS OF EUROPE

SOKUROVS RUSSIAN ARK

n the table, in the glow of the wax candle, stood the tiny bronze Europa
O riding a galloping bull. Balocanksi took the tiny figurine in his hand
and began to examine it under the light holding it close to his eyes, so that
he seemed to be sniffing at the little Europa like a dog.
Miroslav Krleza, The Return of Philip Latinowicz

THIS VIGNETTE FROM KRLEZAS 1932 novel with its tutelage of Empire, and second its ferocious return after
image of sniffing might encapsulate the complex rela- the fall of Soviet-styled socialismthere has been an
tionship of Europe to what Etienne Balibar has called explosion of discourses about nationalism and nostal-
its double bordersthose lands that are both within gia. Many critics have pointed out that nostalgia signi-
and outside of European borders.1 Like many films from fies a longing (algia) to return home (nostos). The
Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean (such as the construction of a homeland, driven by longing, can in
work of Theodoros Angelopoulos, Youssef Chahine, turn conveniently be used as a means of legitimizing
and Gianni Amelio), Aleksandr Sokurovs Russkij the emerging nation-state after the age of Empire
kovcheg/Russian Ark (2003) examines the identity and (Ottoman, Russian, Austro-Hungarian) and the Cold
national politics that emerge from such desirous orien- World order. This return to the nation-state, however,
tations toward Europe. Yet rather than represent this as Benedict Anderson and Stathis Gourgouris argue,2 is
(unfortunately unrequited) sniffing as a form of pure more a product of imagination and dreams than an
adulation of the figure of Europe on the part of the historical fact, since it involves rather forgetting the
liminal or non-European, these films reveal the insta- recent past (and even present) than recollecting a dis-
bility of geographical, historical, and cultural points of tant history. Russian Ark demonstrates how nostalgia
reference. This does not mean that they place the for an imaginary past often produces various forms of
Mediterranean and Eastern Europe in the proverbial erasure and national myths of origin. It treats history
backwaters, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia not as fact but as a poetic construction that has drifted
(or the Orient). But by looking toward Europe, they in and out of Europe via metaphor, allusion, and myth.
examine the placement (or self-placement) of the Russian Ark begins with the anxiety produced by
East in Europes master narratives (of progress, civi- a sense of disorientation. The establishing shot is one
lization, development), wherein Easterners must of complete darkness accompanied by a cacophony of
struggle for national and ethnic identities that conform soundsthe wind, a ships foghorn, the tuning of
to notions of European statehood and culture. A central instruments, the sound of moving water, muffled
issue in Russian Ark is the spread of enlightenment laughter, and distorted musical accents that merge into
thought and the rise of the nation-state, and with it var- one another to become indistinguishable. This haunt-
ious forms of nationalism. Accompanying the age of ing background sound reappears throughout the re-
the nation-statefirst its emergence from under the maining 90 minutes of film. A voice (Sokurovs own)

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Film Quarterly, Vol. 59, Issue 1, pages 18-26. ISSN 0015-1386, electronic ISSN 1533-8630. 2005 by The Regents of the University of
California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the
University of California Presss Rights and Permissions website, at www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.
 Francesco Albanis The Rape of Europa (circa 1640-45), now housed in the Hermitage

emerges out of the darkness and, almost as if in an in- and frames its own image of history, architecture, and
ternal monologue, seeks to orient itself: I open my eyes artifacts, or the specter of an uncertain and indeter-
and I see nothing, I remember only that there was some minate Russian present that haunts the halls of its
calamity . . . but I just cant remember what happened monumental past. Yet this monumental past is quite
to me. Alluding to the opening lines of Dantes Inferno exclusive, limited not only to the space of the Hermi-
(and Pushkins allegorical images of the flood of St. tage museum and the Winter Palace (the main resi-
Petersburg in 1824), this lost soul seems to have strayed dence of the Czars), but also to the epoch of Petrine
from the course of time.3 There is no beginning or end- reformsfrom the time of Peter the Great to Czar
ing to this film; no foreboding entrance (as in the case Nicholas II.
of Dantes Inferno), only an unexpected immersion in Later in the film, the calamity from which this
what appears to be the simultaneous presence of vari- solitary voice claims to awaken is clearly identified with
ous layers of the past. The images that suddenly appear the almost 80 years of Soviet rule. The entire Soviet pe-
out of nowhere before this off-screen persona are fleet- riod is presented as an ellipsis in Russian history that is
ing and sporadic recollections of historical scenes, left unnamed and unrepresented in the film. Yet the
interactions, and performances anachronistically joined presence of an half-forgotten memory, neither truly
into one spectacular, continuous, unedited shot. Though there nor absent, haunts this Russian Ark, especially
time is certainly out of joint, this persona will remain since the Hermitage and the Winter Palace played such
estranged from the action of the film. As the voice a significant iconographic role in the Bolshevik Revo-
(and the camera) follows a group of eighteenth-century lution and its commemoration in Sergei Eisensteins
officers and ladies through the back entrance of the October (Oktyabr [1927]) and Vsevolod Pudovkins The
Hermitagepresumably the one designated for people End of St. Petersburg (Konets Sankt-Peterburga [1927]).
of lesser rank and court performershe remarks, Can As Dragan Kujundzic argues, Russian Arks composition
it be that I am invisible, or simply gone unnoticed? as a single long take enacts the erasure of the dominant
The fact that there is no identifying shot leaves the cinematic tradition . . . of Sergei Eisensteins intellectual
identity behind the persona of the voice ambiguous; it montage.4 In fact, the film reverses the frenzied finale
could be the voice of the museum itself that witnesses of October that depicts the Bolsheviks storming the
history and the various Russian figures that float Winter Palace, climbing the famous Jordan staircase and
through its halls, the gaze of the camera that records unseating Kerenski and the provisional government,

19
 is no commemoration of the sacrifices endured and
produced by the Soviets: the image of the soldiers is im-
mediately followed by the sound of Nazi aircraft which
foreshadows the following scene, where we see a man
making his own coffin in a bombed-out room of the
Hermitage during the Germans 900-day siege of Lenin-
grad. The siege is symbolized by coffins and empty
picture frames, and it is referred to by the invisible per-
sona as a great sacrifice on the part of the people and
the museum.
The fact that this image of the Red Army travels be-
Czar Nicholas with his family tween these two religious imagesone of sacrifice and
the other of the belated return (spiritual awakening) of
the prodigal sonmakes it seem more allegorical than
which historically took place in the very same room we historical. This shift between the allegorical (Old Testa-
see in Russian Ark. This time, however, the room is the ment) father(land) that is willing to sacrifice its son(s)
stage for an intimate domestic scene of Czar Nicholas II and the wayward son who returns to the forgiving
having a meal with his family. These images of Nicholas benevolent (New Testament) father(land) suggests both
II and his family are over-exposed (with a slightly red- the end of an era of sacrifice and the return to a spiri-
dish hue), giving the figures a ghostly, if not saintly, tualized fatherland (home or national identity). How-
quality, while also suggesting that they have been worn ever, the placing of the image (of the Red Army) that
out by various competing histories and fantasies (such seems to have no spiritual future next to religious im-
as Disneys Anastasia). Yet the reddish cast also reminds ages that have been interpreted as prophetic (prefigura-
us that they have been bathed in blood. As opposed to tion of Christs atonement and second coming) is
the triumphal ending of October, Russian Ark concludes enigmatic: it questions the boundaries between anony-
with the languid flow of Russian nobles (from various mous (visionless) secular sacrifice (to the state or to the
periods) down the same Jordan staircase and out of the people) and (priceless) iconic spiritual prophecy. Al-
palace toward both a certain (Soviet) and uncertain though fleeting, this sudden appearance of Red Army
(post-Soviet) future. soldiers recalls not only the sacrifice of one million in-
The deliberate omission of references to the Bol- habitants of Leningrad during World War II, but also
shevik Revolution replicates not only the long history the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of nameless
of forced forgetting conducted by the Soviet state, but men and women it took to build and rebuild this mon-
also draws attention to the current erasure of names umental city. What is at stake here is not the political
the Soviet Union has disintegrated into various nation- future of the nation-statethe invisible persona does
states, and in 1991 Leningrad once again became St. not know what kind of state has preceded the disas-
Petersburg. The replacement of names with exclusively trous Soviet onebut the Russian soul, as indicated in
nationalist ones turns the memory of lived experience the very title of the film.6
into the politics of memory. Svetlana Boym points out Although construed as a national liberation, as
that The relationship between Russian and Soviet is Anatoly Khazanov argues, the break with the Soviet
highly contested in the post-Soviet period. Extreme past has produced not one debate but many different
views of this relationship range from viewing the Soviet ideologized interpretations of history, many of which
Union as Russophobic to viewing the Soviet period have been accompanied by the desire to associate with
as a brief episode in the history of the Russian empire.5 the Russian imperial past.7 The obsession in the 90s
While there are references to listening devices with finding the remains of Czar Nicholas II and his
placed in the museum by the KGB and to the worms family, their interment in a proper site of resting, and
that have eaten (destroyed or sold off) the throne in the the possible canonization of the murdered Romanovs
memorial hall of Peter the Great, there is only one fleet- by the Russian Orthodox Churchwith the exception
ing glimpse of the Soviets. Red Army soldiers march of the left-leaning Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich
across a darkened room for only a few seconds, but they represents the impossible dream of returning Russia
are framed inbetween two static and respectively more to its past greatness under the czars. But this discourse
permanent images: The Sacrifice of Isaac and The Re- also establishes the Romanovs as the martyred victims
turn of the Prodigal Son, both by Rembrandt. But there of the Red Terror, cleansing them of their own terrible

20
acts.8 As Gourgouris argues, nostalgia for the patria, or
lost nation, is always utopian and always impossible:
The Nation is both museum site and ground of obliv-
ion . . . where repression and the return of the repressed
take place simultaneously.9
Russian Ark honors, if not privileges, this nostalgic
image of the czar cut adrift from any historical reality
outside of the walls of the Winter Palace. The choice
of Mikhail Glinkas mazurka Life for the Czar
composed in the late nineteenth century to praise the
czar and the Orthodox Russian people and played live
by the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra during the spec- Eighteenth-century ladies
tacular finale of Russian Arknot only reconstructs the
last ball of Czar Nicholas II in 1913, but also connects
the czar to the Russian soul, and to Russias current film pertains to the question of identification (and the
national identity (especially since Glinkas Patriotic Russian national identity) that lies in the fact that the
Song has become the new Russian national anthem). space of commemoration relies also on artifacts that
Upon entering the Memorial Hall of Peter the Great, have nothing to do with Russia, but are entirely im-
the disembodied voice reflects on the ambiguity of such ported from the West, and thus, structurally from out-
nostalgia: Monarchies are not eternal, but we are free side of this site of memory.11
to dream away. Even the art work featured in the film is selective,
Despite this awareness, the film recycles these self- favoring enduring European representations of reli-
constructed (and recollected) dream images of the gious figures (Sts. Peter and Paul, St. John the Baptist,
czars who fancied themselves reformers, modernizers, the Madonna, and a variety of angels), and mythologi-
westernizers who transformed Russia into one of the cal ones (Dana, the Three Graces). The only depiction
Great European Powers. While Russian Ark treats the of a lesser, more dated figure is Frans Jansz van
past (the costumes, gestures, music, historical reenact- Mieris Is Lady in her Boudoir. But this painting of a
ments, etc.) with meticulous detail, it mimics the his- bourgeois lady, her handmaid, and her dog is accom-
torically revised image of Imperial Russia, never once panied by the disdainful comment (on the part of the
following those serfs (or servants) who paid the high European stranger who guides the camera to the paint-
price of the czars enlightened lifestyle. As Stanley ing): . . . rags, a dog, eternal people. Live and go on liv-
Kauffman writes: Except for the few modern visitors ing, youll outlive them all. Yet the stranger seems to
everyone in the film is in the social range from gentry extend his scorn to the disembodied speaker, whom he
up to royalty. If this is really a Russian ark, he asks, growls at, giving him a contemptuous glance just prior
Where is there even a hint of Russias entirety?10 to approaching the painting. This disembodied persona
Maybe this is why the owner of the off-screen voice seems to belong not only to the Third Estate, but also to
which represents and defends Russiais invisible. these eternal people whose presence can be seen in the
As Russian Ark participates in mass amnesia modern (contemporary) scenes. Although not com-
treating the Bolshevik Revolution as both a rupture plete strangers, they are clearly visitors to, rather than
with and an interruption of Russian historyit draws inhabitants of, the ark.
attention to the problems caused by such erasures and In fact, the film reminds us that St. Petersburg itself
desperate attempts to scour the national archives (or was built as a Russian dream of Europe. Peter the Great
treasures) in order to salvage or reinvent some form of moved the capital of Russia from Moscow to St. Peters-
legitimacy. But just what type of continuity does this burg, built a European-style city on a swamp, and col-
single uninterrupted gaze establish? If this continuity is lected artifacts, ideas, institutions, intellectuals, and
just a dream, to whom does this dream belong? Al- artisans from Europe so as to westernize Russia. Even if
though the ark is called Russkij (of the people), Soku- the artisans and architects of the city were either for-
rovs film demonstrates how the contents of the ark eigners imported from Europe (e.g., Bartolomeo Ras-
(both the priceless objects and the live pageantry) be- trelli, Carlo Rossi) or Russians influenced by the culture
long to another ark: that of the Rossiikij (the name of of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Enlightenment (all
the great empire), which orients itself toward Europe. featured in the film), and the implementation of such
Kujundzic points out that the dramatic tension of the reforms were, as the companion of the invisible persona

21
 declares, of the most primitive kind, the voice tells us the fear even among the nobility of expressing any
that Petersburg is still a European city. But as Michael kind of political or social criticism.14
Gordin argues, the Petrine reforms were designed less
to enlighten the Russians than to establish political ab- Russian Ark, then, seems to reverse the Marquis atti-
solutism by enforcing Western court etiquette and a tude toward Russia.
new social (aristocratic) class at the expense of the bo- It is in contrast to Europe (i.e., Custine) that the
yars, the Orthodox church, and ultimately, the lower unseen persona becomes identified as Russian. Rather
classes.12 What is copied from Europe is primarily the than delineating any essential differences between
gesture of consolidating political power as exemplified Europe and Russia, this dialogue enacts the process of
by Louis XIV,13 and secondarily, the international and othering. While Europe calls the invisible speaker his
domestic image of Russiathe appearance of Russia as Russian cicerone, it is Europe who will guide Russia
European. While St. Petersburg (particularly the Her- through the theater or dream of the imperial past, con-
mitage) in its naissance was already a museum of the structing his own version of history. Larry Wolff
old European masters, it was on the other hand (as demonstrates how the construction of Eastern Europe
Sokurov suggests) an imagined city, the czars untimely as a category by representatives of the Western Enlight-
dream of Italy or Europe that was designed not so enment (in this case a French monarchist) secured
much to copy Europe as to extend the borders of the both Europes own myth of Europe as the paradigm
map of Europe from the Elbe and the Julian Alps to the of progress and humanity, and the myth of the non-
Ural mountains. As the Russian speaker tells us, The European as backward and boorish.15 For Custine,
czars were mostly Russophiles, but sometimes they Russia is the other against which Europe will define it-
dreamed of Italy. self. Not only are Russians reduced to talented copy-
Although fascinated by the spectacle of power, the ists, because they dont have ideas of their own, but
invisible speaker seems incapable not only of anchoring Russia (like Greece and the Balkans) are placed off
himself in this particular past, but also of understand- Europes map. Custine responds to the Russian speak-
ing it. It is not until he encounters a kindred spirit, who ers awe at seeing Peter the Great, by remarking, In Asia
appears to be just as lost and disoriented, that he seems tyrants are adored. The more terrible the tyrant the
to establish a point of reference. But this anchoring more cherished is his memory; Alexander the Great,
comes in the form of a tenuous, if not antagonistic, di- Timur, and your Peter the Great.
alogue between the invisible persona and the onscreen The invisible persona is put in a position of de-
stranger, whom this persona calls Europe. He is later fending Russians and Russian culture, but he also
identified by the personas (contemporary) friends as repeats Custines statements almost like an echo re-
the Marquis, and in the last sequence of the film by sounding from the walls of these huge rooms. For in-
the nineteenth-century spy (who shadows these visitors stance, when Custine (Europe) introduces the topic of
throughout the film) as the Marquis Astolphe de Cus- nationalism into the dialogue, only to disregard Rus-
tinea French diplomat to Russia who wrote a critical sias national poet, Aleksandr Pushkin, as nothing
travelogue (La Russie en 1839). Although this figure special, he adds, I am sorry if I have offended your
bears certain resemblances to the historical Custine nationalist sympathies. The invisible persona ques-
he is both awe-struck at the opulence and beauty of the tioningly repeats, What? . . . national . . . national sym-
czars possessions and also acerbically critical of their pathy? But he does not react further. Instead of simply
rulehe is more a composite (Russian) figure of Eu- confronting European criticisms of the East, the film
rope than an accurate depiction of Custine. William shows how Russias sniffing at the various figures of
Johnson comments: Europe is read by Europe as a slavish act of deference.
By allowing the European stranger to assume a superior
The most egregious difference is that [the position, the Russian speaker subtly undermines it,
Russian Arks Custine] accepts the imperial polit- showing that Europes identity is also an imaginary
ical system without question at the end, after tak- construction that is contingent on its others, and iron-
ing part in the grand ball, and decides to stay in ically, it is the Hermitage that houses and preserves the
Russia, while the actual Marquis, who expected to various dreams, memories, and histories of Europe.
admire a system without a representative govern- Shifting from the framing of historic events and
ment (his father and grandfather were guillotined Russian pageantry to the details of various European
in the Reign of Terror), was appalled by it, noting art works, the film seems to relegate Russia to a series of

22
 The Marquis de Custine
commenting on art and history

live performances (history, theater, music, court ritu- Three Graces, he notes that the sculpture was purchased
als) and Europe to a collection of artifacts (paintings, by Czar Alexander I from Napoleon Bonapartes wife
sculptures, architectural features, artistic styles). The in 1815. In opposition to Custine, the various Russian
dialogue between the figures of Europe and Russia and visitors to the museum (the famous ballet dancer Alla
their journey through the time and space of the Hermi- Osipenko, the blind sculptress Tamara Kurenkova, and
tage question such clear divisions, making the Europe- the anonymous man who admires El Grecos St. Peter
ans insistence on superiority look ridiculous (especially and St. Paul) develop their own relationship to the
in contrast to the post-Soviet visitors whom the Euro- works of art independent of the sentiments of nation-
pean encounters). Sokurov pokes fun at Custine, who alism. However, the film constantly reminds us that
seems to see his reflection everywhereEmpire style Custine is many performances in one: he is at the same
everywhereand whose keen sense of smell does not time Custine, a French diplomat, a European, and a
go beyond the paint of the various European Old stranger, but he is also a performance of biased Euro-
Masters he sniffs, or the odors (formaldehyde) that his pean attitudes toward Russia. More importantly, he
own body exudes. Yet here he mistakes or projects his links this live performance of an untimely history to
own stench onto (living) others. The film, however, the haunting presence of those outside of time and geo-
does not clarify who is right. Is it the present that stinks political space.
of death (merely preserving itself on past glory) as the Europe, who is surprised to hear that he is speak-
historical figure of the past thinks, or is it the burden of ing Russian, is in fact a prominent Russian stage actor
history that reeks of death and oppresses the modern (Sergei Donstov) acting the part of the Marquis (Eu-
visitors? rope). But this time, the Marquis de Custine does not
Russian Ark parodies not only Europes proprietary enter the palace with a diplomatic entourage as we see
attitude toward the art works featured in the film, but with the Persian delegationsent to persuade Czar
also what they represent. When Custine is introduced Nicholas I not to go to war over the murder of Russian
to the Russian personas friends (Sokurovs real-life diplomats in Tehrannor does he appear as stiff and
friends Lev Yeliseyev and Oleg Khmelnisky), he arro- staid as the other diplomats (as surely a French diplo-
gantly asks them if they are interested in beauty or just mat of the time would). Instead, he is an obvious parody
the imitation of it? But as they lead Custine to Tin- of Europeflamboyantly delivering French lines with a
torettos The Nativity of St. John the Baptist, it is clear Russian body. When we first encounter this strange
that he is not interested in the paintings beauty (as are European, he is hovering behind the masquerade actors
these two patrons of the museum), but only in what it who greet the party guests, the officers and ladies in the
represents in terms of French history. He comments, in first visual shot of the film. The Russian speaker en-
fact, that Catherine the Great acquired the painting at a counters Europe only after passing through two
Paris auction of the Crozat Collection in 1772. Simi- groups of actors, confusing him to the point that he can-
larly, while overwhelmed by the beauty of Canovas not distinguish theatrical performance from historical

23
 structed the first incarnation of the Winter Palace and
the museum, which was then a Kunstkammer, library,
and natural history museum for his Academy of Sciences.
Catherine the Great was the founder of the Hermitage,
and bought over 250 paintings in 1764 to begin the col-
lection. Czar Nicholas I opened the New Hermitage in
1852 and provided public access to the museum. The
reign of Nicholas II marks the end of the Hermitages
double role as museum and home to the czars. It also
marks the end of the epoch of Petrine reforms, and
what the film presents as the splitting of Russia from
The last ball Europe during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods.
The film mimics this historical progression by
reenactment. He asks, Can it be that this has all been moving upwards from the original darkness through
staged for me? Am I expected to play a role? He even the dark quarters of Peter the Great to the brilliantly
asks this stranger, whom he now finds lurking in the colorful climactic ball given by Nicholas II, only to de-
hallway, Is this all theater? scend once again into the darkened waters of the Neva.
Yet this allegorical figure of Europe will further ex- This movement from the small provincial courtrooms
tend the metaphor of theater to Russia itself: Russia is of Peter the Great to the opulent high-ceilinged ball-
like theater, how pretentious these people are. What rooms of Czar Nicholas Is court and Czar Nicholas IIs
actors! And those costumes! Russian Ark draws atten- gala ballroom also marks the growth of the city and the
tion to multiple layers of theatricality. On one level, St. Empires geopolitical importance with respect to Eu-
Petersburg and the Winter Palace provide the stage for rope. As opposed to the fluid movement of the camera,
Russians to act as if they were European: on another which follows the rhythm of the dancers, musicians,
level, this artificiality and pretentiousness seem to be and various guests at the ball, the images of Peter I are
imported to Russia from European court culture itself tightly framed. He is seen through windows and door-
the disguising of the violence of political and impe- ways. Often the ceiling can be seen in the frame, giving
rial power with etiquette and diplomacy. In addition, the images a claustrophobic effect. This image alludes
history, remembrance, and even the presentas for in- to Pushkins famous characterization of St. Petersburg
stance in the case of Osipenko, who acts (dances) out as opening a window onto Europe in his poem The
her relationship to Rembrandts Danaare played out Bronze Horseman (Mednyi Vsadnik, 1833). Ironi-
as cameo performances. Finally, the films focus on the- cally, here it is the figure of Europe and the Russian
ater draws attention to film as an artistic performance. speaker who apprehensively peek through the window
Although Russian Ark emphasizes theatricality, it at Peter Ibut a Peter stripped of the trappings of en-
doesnt spin it out of control into random, disjointed lightened despotism. Through these windows we see
acts that repeat, intersect, and dissolve into oblivion. Peter physically bully his wife (Catherine I) and humil-
Instead the film hinges all these disparate and frag- iate one of his ministers by forcing him to the ground
mentary performances on the physical and historical and making him crawl out of his presence. This scene
map of the Hermitage and the Winter Palace. The tra- enacts the hypocrisy of the Petrine reforms that used
jectory of Europe and Russia does not seem to fol- public humiliations and state intrusion to introduce
low any order or chronology. As they move from room Russians into polite society. The window also serves as
to room, they also move from the time of Peter the a barrier to keep Peter at a distance. He is treated as an
Great (early eighteenth century) to Catherine the Great enigma.16 The man who, in popular culture, taught the
(eighteenth century), to various periods in the nine- Russians to enjoy themselvespopular folklore tells us
teenth century, contemporary Petrograd, to the siege of that he threw wild, drunken parties and demonstrated
Leningrad during WWII, and back to an older and extraordinary sexual prowessis also the man who, as
more feeble Catherine the Great (in the late eighteenth Custine reminds the Russian speaker, ordered his own
century). What appears in chronological order are the sons execution.
various czars, from Peter the Great to Catherine the Boym writes:
Great, Nicholas I, and Nicholas II. Each czar played a
significant role in the history of the museum: Peter For Russian thinkers, the window to the
the Great not only founded the city, but also con- West turned into a magic mirror in which they

24
 saw mostly their own reflections. Conversely,
Russia was an exotic playground for Western trav-
elers, the land of the firebird or tyranny in the
19th century, and the land of possible com-
munist utopia, or alternatively of the totalitarian
gulag.17

But the film is not uncritical of the Russian gaze

through a European window at itself. The city, like the
very foundations of the Hermitage and the history of
the St. Petersburg czars, is built on top of this boorish
figure of Peter the Great. Catherine, the great patron of The waters of the Neva
the arts who launched this Russian ark, is presented less
boorishly. First she appears watching a rather garish World War I, the Revolution, Stalinism, WWII, the
theatrical play (presumably her own production) that Cold War and its anti-climactic finale.
mixes classical Roman and Russian figures with mas- At this point of closure, the last image of the czars,
querade and fantasy characters. Alone among the czars the invisible speaker loses sight of his European accom-
she has a second appearance, yet in her reappearance plice, following first the white nun and then the awk-
she is a somewhat pathetic figure, hiding behind a col- ward yet ever-present spy into the ballroom. The
umn as the children of the court play blindmans bluff. European becomes increasingly more embroiled in the
This time, she is almost unrecognizable to the disem- spectacle of the past, and less engaged in the antagonis-
bodied visitor. But both times she is shown running tic dialogue with the invisible Russian speaker. This dis-
offfirst, she claims, to take a piss, while the other engagement produces a feeling of weightlessness. The
time she disappears into the cold white-and-grey world camera and the speaker appear to be more disembod-
outside the palace. As the film progresses and the art, as ied, gliding through the ballroom, floating above the
Custine claims, gets better and better, the czars appear orchestra and around the dance floor. Yet, just as the
less active, almost ridiculously immobile. camera and the speaker seem to be swept away by the
Nicholas I walks down two steps so as to indicate music and the festivities, there is a loss of grounding
that he is receiving the address of the Persian ambassa- that will leave the invisible speaker with a sense of
dor, and then turns to his minister to indicate that the melancholy and disorientation once the music stops. As
words the minister will read are his own. It is almost as he approaches Europe for the last time he remarks, I
if he has become a European clockwork figurine. In this lost you, and repeats, Have I lost you? as if to indicate
scene it is the camera that becomes more fluid, moving that not only is he lost, but so is this era of opulence,
through the tableau of a historical festival, giving this splendor, and power. When he suggests to Europe,
image a three-dimensional feel. The contrast between Lets go . . . forward, his European companion, visibly
cinematic fluidity and figural stasis is repeated in the saddened, responds by asking, What will we find
scene of Nicholas II presiding at the head of an intimate there? The future to which the Russian speaker refers is
family breakfast in full ceremonial dress. But already by not the Russian Revolution, but an unknown future be-
the time we follow Czarina Alexandra and her sister yond the Soviet period.
Elizabeth (the white nun who was also killed by the Rather than remaining with Europe like an arti-
Bolsheviks in 1918) down the hallway, there is a fore- fact fixed within a historical frame, the Russian speaker
boding specter of doom looming beyond the walls of follows the moving spectacle down the stairs, but he be-
the Winter Palace.18 When Alexandra comes into focus, comes one with the camera that moves between and be-
it is as if we hear her thoughts: You are always there yond these historical figures, only to float through this
watching me. Later she will ask Elizabeth if she hears window to Europe and onto the desolate waters of the
the gunshots, and tell her that she feels the presence of Neva. Like Pushkins The Bronze Horseman, the film
someone watching. Of course there are many specta- takes a sudden twist from the monumental heights of
tors watchingnot only Europe, but Russia and the the ark (island) of the czar to the surface of the Neva.19
camera itself. As the camera pulls away from the family, It is here over the water that the disembodied speaker
they seem to bid it farewell. The invisible speaker will reflects, Too bad you are not here with me, you would
echo this gesture as he bids farewell to Europe at the top understand everything; look, the sea is all around and
of the Jordan stairs on his descent into the future we are destined to sail forever . . . to live forever. While

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 the film closes with another nebulous imagethe was patterned after the Baroque courts of late 16th century
darkened winter sky of St. Petersburg over the frozen Italy: it centered on ceremony, emblems, and panegyrics in a
manner not seen in Western Europe since the golden age of
waters of the Nevait recalls these anonymous eternal
Florence. This cultural lag time has been attributed to the
people who seem to sail undetected between the bor- fact that Russia has imported its courtly culture from German
ders of Asia and Europe, within the borders of someone states, which were themselves behind France, Italy and Eng-
elses dreams of an unforeseeable future and an impos- land. He argues, The purpose of Peters reforms were to cre-
sible past, between the secularism of Enlightenment ate a new class of the Russian elite, which primarily entailed
education . . . borrowed from the Berlin Academy of Science,
thought and the return of religion, lost somewhere in
but despite Peters gestures toward social mobility, this civiliz-
the exchange of ideology for international currency. ing process was not meant to go all the way down the social
Sokurov seems to be as unwilling to identify these float- ladder. . . . He merely wanted it to appear estate-blind, in effect
ing people as he is to anchor them on one bank or the these reforms were meant to form a new class formation (11-
other. What he does emphasize is the rift between the 13). See also Marc Raetf, Seventeenth Century Europe in
aesthetics of Russias monumental idols, history, and Eighteenth Century Russia, Slavic Review 41 (1982): 611-19.
13. See the work of Norbert Elias, Power and Civility: The Civiliz-
politics of empire and the murky, imageless (if not in- ing Process, vol. 2, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pan-
visible) eternal people over whom all these spectacular theon, 1982) and The Court Society, trans. Jephcott (New
images pass. York: Pantheon, 1983).
14. William Johnson, Russian Ark, Film Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 2
NOTES (Winter 2003-04): 48.
I would like to thank Mario Biagioli and Robert Dulgarian for 15. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization
their careful reading and smart comments on this essay. on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1994).
1. Etienne Balibar, We the People of Europe? trans. James Swen- 16. Peter I is presented as somewhat of a stranger himself. While
son (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004). See he humiliates one of his nobles, we hear the invisible speaker
Chapter 1, At the Borders of Europe. say, He was obviously a foreigner, why would he be so rude
2. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, otherwise, seemingly in reference to the European figure. Of
1983) and Stathis Gourgouris, Dream Nation (Stanford, CA: course many of the czars were foreigners, in that like all
Stanford University Press, 1996). European aristocracy, they came from various noble houses
3. Dante Alighieris Inferno (one of the first texts written in vul- (in this case, mainly German and Prussian) outside of their
gar idiom) begins: In mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/mi own empire. But here we are asked to think about Peters dis-
ritrovai in una selva oscura/che la diritta vita era smarrita/ . . . taste for all things Russian, his brutal treatment of Russian
Perdete ogni speranza o voi che entrate. nobility, the Orthodox Church, and his attraction to, if not
4. Dragan Kujundzic, After After: The Arkive Fever of Alexan- identification with, Europe. If Peter is the keel to this Russian
der Sokurov, Art Margins, Spring 2003, www.artmargins.com/ ark, then what does it mean to be Russian?
content/cineview/kujundzic/html. This essay is also repub- 17. Boym, From the Russian Soul, 149.
lished in Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 21, no. 3 18. The film replaces the controversial spiritual advisor of Alek-
(July-September 2004): 219-39. Although the film has been sandra, Grigorii Rasputin, with Elizabeth, so as to further le-
widely reviewed, there has been little serious analysis. Ku- gitimize the royal house.
jundzics piece not only stands out amongst the literature, but 19. The Bronze Horseman juxtaposes the great monuments
also sets a high bar for further examination of the film. and feats of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great to a lowly
5. Svetlana Boym, From the Russian Soul to Post-Communist bureaucratic functionary, Yevgeny, who takes refuge under the
Nostalgia, Representations 49 (Winter 1995): 145. statue of Peter the Great during the great flood of 1824. The
6. For a reading of the notion of spirit and nation as a perform- poem shifts from the praise of the city to the story of Yevgeny
ance of sacred, see Raoul Eshelmans Sokurovs Russian Ark going mad once he realizes that his sweetheart has perished
and the End of Postmodernism, Art Margins, Summer 2003, during the flood, and it follows his madness, anger, death, and
www.artmargins.com/content/cineview/eshelman/html. burial in a paupers (unmarked) grave.
7. Anatoly M. Khazanov, Ethnic Nationalism in the Russian
Federation, Ddalus, vol. 126, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 130-38.
KRISS RAVETTO-BIAGIOLI is the author of The Unmaking of Fascist
8. Ironically, it was Peter the Great who curtailed the power of
Aesthetics (University of Minnesota Press) and various articles on
the Orthodox Church in his Spiritual Regulations of 1721 and
Eastern European cinema. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at
subordinated the church to a secular government bureau, the
Holy Synod. Harvard University, where she is completing a book on cinema on
9. Gourgouris, Dream Nation, 45. the borders of Europe.
10. Stanley Kauffman, Remembrances, New Republic (Decem-
ber 16, 2002): 26. ABSTRACT This paper analyzes how Aleksandr Sokurovs Russian
11. Kujundzic, After After. Ark treats the complex relationship of Russia and Europe, consider-
12. Michael Gordin, The Importation of Being Ernest: The Early ing their history not as a fact but as a poetic construction. The film
St. Petersburg Academy of Science, Isis 91 (2000): 16. Gordin demonstrates how nostalgia for an imaginary past often produces
observes: Peters court was Western only in the sense that it various forms of historical erasure and national myths of origin.

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