From the Netflix files: Russian Ark

Don't watch The Russian Ark [Russkii Kovcheg] (2002) for the plot (there isn’t a plot), or for the costumes (some appear to have been stolen from tourist-photo-op-actors on Nevsky). But Aleksandr Sokurov’s virtuosic single shot is pleasantly dizzying, and marks an important innovation in the cinematic portrayal of time and space. The entire film can be boiled down to the following: a whispering Marquis de Custine (Sergei Dreiden) with an unidentifiable European accent guides the viewer in an hour-and-a-half-long polonaise through various chapters of Russian history. By setting the entire film in St. Petersburg’s splendid Hermitage (the permission for which marks a heroic achievement in its own right), Sokurov likens his contemporary audience’s distant perception of history to a tourist’s first picturesque walk through a winter garden in bloom.