'The Wizard of the Kremlin' review: Baby, you can drive my czar
Paul Dano is the spin doctor behind Jude Law's Putin in political thriller
You can watch Moving Image Madison’s Jim Kreul and I talk about “The Wizard of the Kremlin” here.
Usually films inspired by true events have the “This movie is a work of fiction” disclaimer during the closing credits. But Oliver Assayas’ ‘The Wizard of the Kremlin” tells us up front that the main character is a fictional creation, and that while the film uses some real-life figures, it invents dialogue and opinions for them.
I suppose you can’t be too careful when you’re making a film that attempts to penetrate the inner sanctum of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his murderous regime.
Those caveats aside, “Wizard” is a fascinating look inside the corridors of power, how ruthless men manipulate politics for their own ends in general, and specifically how Russia devolved from the brief but heady freedom of 1990s glasnost to the modern gangster state it is today.
As in the French novel by Giuliano da Empoli, putting a fictional character at the center, a Russian spin doctor nicknamed “the new Rasputin,” frees up the film to tell a more entertaining and sweeping story, with mordantly witty dialogue and a broad, colorful cast of characters.
The film’s framing device follows Rowland (Jeffrey Wright), a writer who comes to Moscow in 2019 to research the Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, whose 1924 novel “We” is considered an inspiration for George Orwell’s “1984.” Rowland once wrote an article on Putin’s top advisor Vadim Baranov, calling him the “inventor of fake democracy,” so he’s a little surprised when Baranov invites him to his country dacha.
The meat of the film is Baranov telling Rowland about his life, spilling secrets about how he found his way into Putin’s good graces. It’s a story that starts in the early ‘90s after the fall of the Soviet Union, and Assayas captures the chaotic hope of Russian youth as they seem to be speed-running the free-love ‘60s and the greed-is-good ‘80s simultaneously.
Erudite almost to a fault (the narration at times gets so pervasive it felt like I was watching a staged audiobook), it’s an ambitious look inside the inner workings of a very nasty political machine.
While Baranov puts on avant-garde plays (including an adaptation of “We”) in the theater with his girlfriend Ksenia (a wasted Alicia Vikander), his friends like Dmitri (Tom Sturridge) are amassing fortunes by methods that would be deemed illegal – if there was anybody left to enforce the law.
As greed wins out over art, Baranov ditches his principles and takes a job as a reality TV show producer, where he falls under the sway of media oligarch Boris Berezovsky (Will Keen). Berezovsky senses the Russian people are tiring of chaos and yearning for order, and with current President Boris Yeltsin on political (and literal) life support, he sees a change agent in uncharismatic KGB head Vladimir Putin (Jude Law). (Interestingly, Keen played Putin in Peter Morgan’s play “Patriots” in New York and London, with Tom Hollander and Michael Stuhlbarg taking the Berezovsky role.)
Given how large Law looms in the trailers for “Wizard,” it’s a little surprising that he doesn’t enter the movie until this late. But it’s the right choice to keep him back and dole him out sparingly. Law avoids mere impersonation, chillingly good at capturing both Putin’s animal cunning and his insecurities on the world stage. (Unfortunately we do not get to see Jude Law shirtless on a horse.)
As Putin is elected and the crackdown begins, the parallels to fascism’s rise in the West are unmistakable. When Baranov chews out the producers of a comedy show for making fun of Putin, and sneers “it’s up to the prime minister to determine the line between satire and insult,” you hear echoes of FCC chair Brendan Carr in his veiled threats.
Law avoids mere impersonation, chillingly good at capturing both Putin’s animal cunning and his insecurities on the world stage. (Unfortunately we do not get to see Jude Law shirtless on a horse.)
Whatever Quentin Tarantino might say, Dano is a very good actor, and he plays Baranov as an arch observer of Russia’s downfall as well as one of its chief architects. He delivers ironic aphorisms in a sort of singsong lilt (“If you don’t grab power, power grabs you”) as if dryly amused by it all. He’s a master chess player, and when someone tries to challenge him or Putin, he gives them a sad little smile, as if playing a novice who tries to move a rook diagonally.
The film rushes to cover events up until 2019, and at times positions Baranov as sort of the Forrest Gump of Russian current events, putting him at the center of every development. Russia’s social media disinformation campaign? Baranov’s idea. Influencer of Ukraine’s corrupt elections? Him too. When we see Baranov designing the outfits for the 2014 Olympic opening ceremonies in Sochi, it seems like a little much. And an attempt late in the movie to humanize Baranov by rekindling his relationship with Ksenia really doesn’t work.
Still, despite its missteps and a rather abrupt ending, I was engrossed throughout. Assayas’ long and eclectic career has included some wonderfully elliptical arthouse films (“Personal Shopper,” “Clouds of Sils Maria”), but “Wizard” falls more in line with his grounded political thrillers like “Carlos.” Erudite almost to a fault (the narration at times gets so pervasive it felt like I was watching a staged audiobook), it’s an ambitious look inside the inner workings of a very nasty political machine.
“The Wizard of the Kremlin” opens Friday in theaters. In Madison, it will play at Marcus Point, Marcus Palace, and AMC Fitchburg.