Jude Law, as Vladimir Putin, left, and Paul Dano, as Vadim Baranov, in a scene from The Wizard of the Kremlin.Carole Bethel/The Associated Press
Jude Law transforms into Vladimir Putin for Olivier Assayas’s The Wizard of the Kremlin, which has its world premiere Sunday at the Venice Film Festival.
Law said Sunday before the premiere that he didn’t enter the project naively, and that he also does not fear repercussions for his portrayal.
“I felt safe in the hands of Olivier,” Law said. “This is a story that was going to be told intelligently with nuance and consideration. We weren’t looking for controversy for controversy’s sake.”
Law, who wore prosthetics for his transformation, said his Putin is “a character in a much larger story.”
“We weren’t trying to define anything about anyone,” Law added.
The film is an adaptation of Giuliano da Empoli’s bestselling book of the same name, an account of the Russian president’s rise to power alongside a fictional adviser called Vadim Baranov, who is played by Paul Dano. It’s partially set in the early 1990s amid post-Soviet chaos and continues through 2014.
Dano’s character was inspired by the real political strategist Vladislav Sourkov, who was considered the architect of the tightly controlled political system created under Putin. In 2013, he resigned his post of deputy prime minister.
Much of the story is centered on Dano’s character, recounting his own rise in political maneuvering and the world he helped create.
“The wizard is the person who is in the background, so there’s a casting of a spell that is happening,” Dano said.
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The Wizard of the Kremlin is sure to provoke conversations as Russia’s three-year war in Ukraine continues. Efforts to stop the fighting with a ceasefire and end Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II through a comprehensive peace settlement have made no progress despite intense diplomatic maneuvering.
“The film is very much about how modern politics, 21st-century politics were invented,” Assayas said. “What’s going on right now is not only terrifying but it’s even more terrifying by the fact that we have not found the answer.”
The book was written before Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine, but da Empoli said that even if it’s about an earlier period, it was “right.”
“It’s still relevant today, three years later, under different circumstances,” da Empoli said.
The film marks the English language debut for the French filmmaker best known for films like Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper, as well as the miniseries Carlos. Alicia Vikander, who he directed in Irma Vep, also co-stars in The Wizard of the Kremlin as Vadim Baranov’s on-again-off-again girlfriend. Her character, the filmmaker said, was supposed to embody “freedom.”
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“This is a story about a lot of men talking in rooms,” Vikander said. “But Olivier told me that we need a world that shows the women who inhabit it also. A female counterpart but a very moral one as well.”
Production took place in Latvia as they couldn’t film in Russia.
Assayas wrote in his director’s statement that it, “is not a film about the rise of one man – nor is it about the force with which power is imposed, or the reinvention of a nation that is both modern and archaic, once again under the yoke of totalitarianism. Rooted in real, contemporary events, it is instead a reflection on modern politics – or rather, the smoke screens behind which it now hides: cynical, deceptive, and toxic.”
He added: “The Wizard of the Kremlin is not so much a political film as it is a film about politics – and the perversity of its methods, which now hold us all hostage.”
The film is playing in the main competition, with titles like Frankenstein, Bugonia, The Voice of Hind Rajab, La Grazia and No Other Choice also vying for the top prizes, including acting and directing awards. Winners will be announced on Sept. 6.
The Wizard of the Kremlin does not yet have a release date in North America. Actor Jeffrey Wright, who plays the journalist Vadim Baranov is telling his story to, made a plea for why the film needs to be seen, especially in America.
“Even within the time frame of the original sins of America … we had an idea that we could be better. This idea that we could aspire toward some sort of utopian perfectibility,” Wright said. “If that is lost, as it is now, than we become what we see in this film.”
