The ultimate cinematic tour de force, Alexander Sokurov spent more than seven months rehearsing with some two thousand actors and extras for what would become a single, continuous 87-minute tracking shot. Using the Hermitage in St. Petersburg as his location, Sokurov was allowed only one day by the directors of the museum to complete the shot, and the results are magnificent. Journeying through two-hundred years of pre-Soviet Russian history, a stranger leads the camera through the halls of the venerated museum, encountering such notables as Nicholas and Alexandra and Catherine the Great. As the film builds to its astonishing climax, Sokurov’s merging of technical marvel and artistic vision becomes fully realized.