The longest shot in the history of the film, a shot through more than thirty exhibition halls in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the ninety-minute film appears more than 2,000 actors in different costumes, and every actor in the camera is in the play.
At the beginning of the film, the male narrator who runs through the film wakes up in the darkness, and the narrator opens his eyes, but he can't see anything, just remembering some accidents, everyone is trying to run to find a safe place, he just can't remember what happened. The gaze touches a group of dignitaries hurrying to the ball, and the narrator recognizes from the costumes of this group that it is the beginning of the nineteenth century, follows the crowd to the Winter Palace and talks to himself that everything is prepared for himself, what role he is going to play. Around the corner the narrator meets another French diplomat who crosses over, the old gentleman who acts as the questioner, the hermitage collection, the critical connoisseur and the tour leader.
The film is really super cool, the viewing of different exhibition halls will replace the modern era with Russia a thousand years ago, and it has gone through dynastic changes, and it is known from the narrator's words that it is Peter the Great who is reprimanding her subordinates; Empress Catherine shouts to go to the toilet after watching the performance gracefully asking the minister's opinion; Persian envoys visit the Tsar, and the family dinner of the last Tsar on the eve of the revolution. As a group of cute girls returned to the ballroom, the French diplomat even danced with the little girl inside, claiming that he had forgotten everything.
Interestingly, the narrator is not seen by anyone inside except the French diplomat, and is completely transparent. French diplomats are smelled of formalin when they meet modern people in the exhibition hall, and back in the nineteenth century, they are also seen by people inside and constantly expelled, and when they need to peek into the royal family, there is only the narrator's lens, and there is no French diplomat.
The film ends with a ball party ending, with the narrator urging the French diplomat to follow the crowd, and the diplomat asks: Where are you going? The narrator goes back to him. The diplomat said where we could go, and he decided to stay, and was silent with a serious and sad face. And the narrator says: Farewell to Europe. The narrator walks outside with the flow of people and meets the masked actor at the beginning, the camera ends in a sea, and the narrator says that we are destined to drift forever, to live forever. This paragraph is particularly meaningful.