December 23, 2001 is the last chance for Russian director Alexander Sokurov. Holed up inside St. Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum, an exhausted camera crew, two thousands actors in period costume, and three orchestras are waiting for the signal to start. This is the one fact that everyone who has heard of “Russian Ark” knows even before watching it: this movie was filmed entirely in one take. Using a Steadicam to stabilize the shot, the whole 96-minute movie was filmed and saved, uncompressed, onto a hard disk. No cuts, no transitions; this is the most realistic movie I’ve seen.