One man’s meditation on art, history, culture, and oppression, Francofonia manages to be grandiose and confining at once: sweeping in Russian director Alexander Sokurov’s view of Paris and the magnificent Louvre Museum; wide-ranging in its cinematic and thematic ambitions; and claustrophobic in its darkness and relentless ruminations, expressed in a voice-over that never stops. Moments of artistic thrills and inadvertent farce also punctuate the film, an acquired taste that will produce a little bafflement on the way to greater rewards.

Sokurov wowed critics and filmgoers with 2002’s Russian Ark, a saga of Russian history rendered in one single amazing take within the halls of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum. He brings the same questions on art’s role in determining a nation’s destiny to his latest film. The subject feels vital because one of the storylines the film pursues—and there are many—is the fate of the Louvre’s art collection under the Nazis.

Heavily treated, gold-toned reenactments profile the lives and wartime deeds of French civil servant Jacques Jaujard (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) and a Nazi general, Count Franziskus Wolff-Metternich (Benjamin Utzerath), and their standoff over how to protect the museum’s treasures. Their interaction aims for tension as the two reach a rapprochement on the cultural patrimony’s fate, but these scenes feel rather passive and stagy.

Other themes include art at risk, embodied in Skype conversations between Sokurov and the fictitious captain of a ship carrying artwork over stormy seas. The relationship between portraiture and civilization is brought alive by tight, richly impastoed shots from the Louvre’s collection and a reflective look back on Russia’s cultural heritage. “Such faces, such souls,” murmurs the director over stills of Anton Chekhov and Russian sailors from the early 20th century. Sokurov serves as a nearly nonstop narrator, a restless mind grappling with deep thoughts.

The director deploys bold technical flourishes to represent his ideas. He dubs in absurd dialogue over vintage Nazi newsreels—Hitler asks directions to the Louvre. He pays homage to the allure of Paris with composited aerial shots and computer-generated pastiches to highlight the city at different, sometimes intriguingly overlapping points in history. He makes museum scenes ring with rustling, creaking, and footfall sound effects, perhaps to echo the passage of time. And, rather ridiculously, he throws in Napoleon and French national symbol Marianne strutting around the Louvre. Napoleon is bearable as he points out repeatedly that a lot of the art in the museum would not be there without him. “C’est moi, tout ca. Sans moi, rien.” All Marianne does is gasp, “Liberté, égalité, fraternité!” Her presence is pretty silly, even in a movie that grants itself the broadest of artistic privileges.

A sense of grievance builds as Sokurov compares the gentle treatment meted out to Paris by the Nazis to the bloodshed rained on his own homeland: “France, how lucky you were that Germany recognized your right to exist.” Scenes of Parisian women gaily partying with Nazi officers contrast with images of the S.S. razing Russian villages. Sadly, Russians faced two deadly perils. First, Germans did not consider them racial, cultural, or artistic equals. Second, Stalin’s pursuit of no surrender subjected soldiers and civilians to total Nazi destruction. Sokurov cannot really arrive at a reckoning in his bitter assessment of the two peoples’ fortunes. It’s as though the film wants to acknowledge without explicitly saying that collaboration—say what you will about its morality—saved a lot of people (and art).

The best strategy to flow with Francofonia is to let your eyes feast on the film’s dark beauty, to be open to Sokurov’s tangle of intriguing ideas, and to pursue your own meditation on art and civilization. The film acts as a catalyst—you may surprise yourself with what you dream up under its spell.