Olivier Assayas’ mad and maddening take on the mastermind behind Putin never quite lands a proper punch.
If an almost-three-hour is-it-spoof-is-it-not directed by a French auteur starring Jude Law as Vladimir Putin sounds a bit odd, just wait until you see it. Adapted from Giuliano da Empoli’s novel of the same name, The Wizard of the Kremlin is fashioned as a biopic for Paul Dano’s Vadim Baranov, a successful TV producer, lover of all things art and Tupac Shakur fan who ends up as the unlikely adviser to Putin during the early days of his meteoric political rise. We are ushered into this strange beast through the soothing voice of Jeffrey Wright’s narrator, an academic fascinated with Russian sociopolitics whose work earns him a rare invitation to Baranov’s isolated estate.
His visit works as a nifty narrative device to walk us through the life of the mysterious kingmaker: from his cushy childhood as the son of a civil servant in communist Russia, to the way that the freedom that came with the fall of the regime fuelled his burning creative urges, and then his early days as a television producer in a burgeoning private network owned by the oligarch Boris Berezovsky (Will Keen).
It is Berezovski who plucks the young and hungry producer from the loudly brash realm of television and into the quietly brash realm of politics, properly kicking off Assayas’s study of power as the driving force of modern Russia. The film hammers this binary of the West as fixated on money and the East on sovereignty as if a recently discovered thesis and, like a theatre undergrad first hearing about Chekhov, this rapidly becomes grating.
What The Wizard of the Kremlin does have up its sleeve, however, is a welcome self-awareness of the ludicrousness of its existence, particularly when it comes to Law’s Putin. The English actor does away with the need for a pantomime accent or overt mannerisms in favour of leaning headfirst into this concoction that is not so much meant to represent the Russian president as Jude Law’s version of it. The result is a mesmerising amalgamation that fittingly lends itself to this idea of a dictator moulded and welcomed by the hands of pop culture.
Coming fast in the opposite lane is Dano’s Baranov, a performance coloured by the nagging self-consciousness of its performer. The overstretched early chapters portraying the spin doctor’s youth bring with them a laugh-out-loud attempt to pass off 41-year-old Dano for a 20-year-old, his beaming eyes trying to capture the wonder of seeing lesbians make out in a dirty toilet and men being guided by leather leashes in a cracking all-night party that epitomises the wildness of the Russian youth.
As it stumbles towards its predictable final scene, the film fully abandons its attempt at riotous farce to try grasping at the sombre reality of the present. It is a commendable endeavour, but it completely misunderstands where the treasure chest of its premise lies, maddeningly pulling away from the welcome provocation of the absurd to add another desperate scream to the torturous echo chamber we are all currently trapped in.
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