Arquivo

Fourth film of the Elegy sequence. Conceived, according to Sokúrov “as an analysis of the past and of modern Russia, its culture and history”, this Petersburg Elegy consists of two parts interconnected: the errant trajectory of the Shaliapin family and the lives of the residents of contemporary St. Petersburg. The focus of the film is on a former Hollywood actor, Fiodor Shaliapin who returns on a visit to his native city sixty years after he left the country, as a child, with his family. Shaliapin is the son of legendary Russian classical singer Fiodor Shaliapin (1873-1938) who immigrated with his family to the east in the twenties. His father was the protagonist in Elegy (1986). According to the Russian film critic Alexandra Tuchinskaya, Sokúrov sees the private lives and family problems of an artist in connection with the society he came from. “The personality of the artist anticipates the future of his people which determines his ‘genetic code’. Care with the human nature of the family, of the nation, and of a man such as Shaliapin must be the essential objective of civilization.”