Objectively, Alexandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark is a bravura feat. At 96 minutes, it unfolds in a single continuous shot — unbroken, unedited, captured in a single take. There are no second chances. At the 80-minute mark, you don’t want to be the extra who trips on his coattails.

The details of the production are stunning. The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, which comprises six historic buildings and whose collection numbers almost three million items, was closed for a day so Sokurov could assemble his cast of two-thousand actors and extras for a single, feature-length tracking shot spanning more than a kilometer. The actors — every single one — were required to be in full makeup and costume all at once. Lighting setups had to be placed and maintained for thirty-nine rooms in a day’s time, and some of the rooms are the size of stadiums. Some scenes were partly improvised. Some were unrehearsed because they were so massive they could not have been staged more than once. And if Sokurov’s job weren’t daunting enough, he is also the main character.

That this film was made, and that it looks so effortless, is enough to rank it among the greatest achievements in cinema. You should see it simply because it exists. However, though I can discuss logistics and marvel, the experience of the film is a relative disappointment. I liked it. I liked it more when I watched it a second time, with a DVD audio commentary by producer Jens Meurer that explains its vague historical contexts. I think I will like it more and more with successive viewings, when I am able to more easily settle into its dreamlike rhythms. But as a finished film, up there on the screen where its technical challenges are only a memory, it falls short of the greatness suggested by the Herculean effort of its production.

Its story is mysterious and intriguing. A man wakes up and does not know where or when he is; the camera assumes his POV, and he’s played by Sokurov in voice-over. He seems to be from the present era, and as he wanders through scenes of Russia’s history he wonders how he has come to be there. Is he dead? Dreaming? Involved in some elaborate performance? Soon he encounters another man who seems out of time: the stranger (Sergei Dreiden), who is European and surprised to be speaking fluent Russian. The stranger is modeled after the Marquis de Custine, a 19th Century French aristocrat and author of Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia.

The stranger is a delightful character, played with marvelous wit and haughty elegance by stage actor Dreiden. He brings life to the film when he’s on screen and leaves it emptier when he’s not. Despite his impertinence, or maybe because of it, he becomes a comfort to us and the narrator; he infects us with his stubborn curiosity as we journey through the grand halls, ballrooms, and exhibits. He galvanizes the film, gives it movement and energy; when he pulls open the doors to a room, we feel the wonder of entering a new world unto itself.

The one-shot filming style works as more than a stunt. Edits are hard and exact; the filmmaker directs our eye from one picture to the next, to the next. Sokurov’s ninety-minute pan instead gives us a feeling of free-floating, exploring, discovering. We are spectral visitors, whose eyes are able to travel about the frame to find our own treasures.

There are images of striking beauty, such as the sight of Catherine the Great running through a frigid courtyard with an attendant, which conveys a longing for times past as she recedes into the background. We feel a similar melancholy watching a massive procession of party guests leaving the palace after a ball. In these scenes there is the sense that something is ended that can never be retrieved.

There are pitfalls, however. Some sections of the film feel listless. A tour of the Rembrandt room reminded me of the times I have visited art museums. I am decidedly unknowledgeable about painting and sculpture and tend to drift past, admire the pretty pictures, and absorb little. Thus I was underwhelmed by the artwork itself and waited restlessly for more interaction between the characters.

The film’s greatest shortcoming is a lack of clarity. It depends in no small part on our familiarity with Russian history and culture for its effect. The final dinner of the Romanov family before the Russian Revolution is mournful and solemn, provided you know it’s the Romanov family and that the Revolution is on the horizon. (Reference to daughter Anastasia is our closest hint.) There is a cameo by poet Alexander Pushkin, who passes across the screen for but a few moments after we see him arguing with his wife; according to Wikipedia, Pushkin’s wife was allegedly having an affair and he died at the hands of her supposed lover in a duel, but you won’t find such edifying details in the film. A running gag shows the stranger followed by a white-gloved man; we learn only by watching the DVD extras that foreigners were habitually shadowed by spies in 19th Century Russia.

Sokurov directed another film that gets stuck in esoterica: 2007’s Alexandra, about a Russian conflict in Chechnya that goes mostly unexplained. This is perhaps not a criticism so much as an observation that such films will likely play better to a home crowd. Or perhaps I am a poor citizen of the world. But after touring the vast chambers of the Hermitage and walking through its history in Russian Ark I am a better one than I was.

Watch a trailer of the movie here: