More than three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and over a decade after the annexation of Crimea, a desire to put the inner mechanics of the Kremlin within a more human framework only feels natural. As in the aftermath of cascading geopolitical crises that shattered our grip on reality in front of our very eyes, a pressing question has emerged: how the hell did we even get here? And who is responsible for all this misery?
Although many astute books — from The Return of the Russian Leviathan by Russian author Sergei Medvedev to The Russo-Ukrainian War by Ukrainian scholar Serhii Plokhy — have been written about Russia’s war-mongering and the myriad ways in which the post-Soviet agents of power have hollowed out its empire from the inside, few of them have tried to put a human face on these architects of oppression. It’s exactly this that Giuliano da Empoli tried to combat with The Wizard of the Kremlin (2022), in which the Swiss-Italian author took a novelistic approach to the past three decades of Russian politics. Told from the personal perspective of Vladimir Putin’s fictional advisor Vadim Baranov, a presumed stand-in for the real-life shadow figure Vladislav Surkov, da Empoli’s book attempts to frame Russia’s recent history through the anecdotal. This narrative framing device suggests a highly subjective vantage point, allowing for a compelling emotional history of Russia’s post-Soviet trajectory. Critics, however, have also remarked how this literary conceit too neatly fits within preexisting notions and conceptions about Putin and modern Russia, essentially resulting in a glossy do-over.
Now, we have Olivier Assayas’ remarkably faithful adaptation of that book, starring Paul Dano as Baranov and Jude Law as his “Czar” Vladimir Putin. Assayas’ The Wizard of the Kremlin could have been a scintillating political thriller that gives a human face to a despot and the Machiavellian advisor who engineered his political rise. Instead, Assayas’ 19th feature film is an impotent work that lands in the bottom tier of the prolific auteur’s oeuvre. This is particularly painful, as Assayas was once one of the most adept filmmakers to reflect on the flux of the 21st century as it unfolded in real-time. Demonlover (2001) — rightly championed by Jake Tropila on this very platform — managed to capture that lightning-in-a-bottle moment in which the Internet took over our very fabric of existence, channeling the violence of a newly imposed hyperreality in a densely layered corporate thriller. The director’s miniseries Carlos (2010), meanwhile, was an electrifying study of Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, turning the political rebel into a bona fide rockstar through the splashy sensibilities of its director. And in turn, Personal Shopper (2016) managed to convey the haunting void of our late-capitalist social media era through a surprisingly spooky postmodern ghost story.
None of those auteurist interventions can be found in the straightforward handling of da Empoli’s book, which is strange, considering the novel’s narration entirely rests on the personal anecdotes of Baranov. Recounting his political ascension after the fall of the Soviet Union to an American journalist (Jeffrey Wright) specializing in Russian politics and literature, the film all too neatly covers the basics of Russia’s recent trajectory. In that process, any form of subjectivity is thrown out of the window, resulting in a series of flaccid scenes that amount to little more than Wikipedia-coded, matter-of-fact accounts of the fictionalized events that propelled a KGB agent from Saint Petersburg to the despotic reign of the Russian Federation. In particular, the lifeless cinematic treatment of the material disappoints on an individual scene level, as there is no visual hierarchy to speak of, nor any rhetorical positionality from Assayas. Dano and Law can try all they want to embody the opportunism and cynical villainy of these menacing figures, but their talking heads-esque handling of dialogue on cheap-looking set pieces makes no room for suspense or friction.
That’s a shame, as the ever-shifting cultural backdrops against which they operate are endlessly fascinating. Particularly, the turbulent early years of post-Soviet Russia, with its crippling poverty, unchecked violence, criminal corruption, and flourishing anti-establishment cultural scenes, are grossly mishandled here. Assayas still tries to flex his rock sensibilities by having Dano chew the scenery at anarchist punk parties and the champagne-fueled dancefloors of kitschy nightclubs, but due to a lacking art department, including subpar make-up and costume design, none of this ever hits the way it should. Simultaneously, the violent poverty of the era is entirely glossed over in Yorick Le Saux’s flattened cinematography that barely boasts any dynamic range to speak of. It makes one yearn for Adam Curtis’ brilliantly hauntological archival miniseries Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone (2022), which burst from the seams with textural details of those scary and chaotic years.
You could say it’s almost radical to make a boring film about such an urgent political story, but such a meta-take would give too much credit to a director who here bafflingly seems to be operating as an unambitious gun for hire. Once The Wizard of the Kremlin moves closer to the present and drags the Chechen wars and the occupation of Ukraine into the narrative, the film’s ineptness only becomes more palpable. This is mostly to do with the flawed source material that offers a highly teleological and linear reading as to how Putin rose to power, resulting in a kind of cowardly confirmation bias. A better pairing of director and script would be able to convey the overwhelming momentum of history’s merciless march toward the future within the grain of the film. Assayas, however, has captured this daunting story through the prism of thoughtless mediocrity, leaving viewers with unfortunately little to do but yawn in the face of one of the gravest political tragedies of our times.
Published as part of Venice Film Festival 2025 — Dispatch 1.
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