{"id":105162,"date":"2025-08-31T15:49:26","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T15:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/105162\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T15:49:26","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T15:49:26","slug":"olivier-assayas-goes-behind-the-iron-curtain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/105162\/","title":{"rendered":"Olivier Assayas Goes Behind The Iron Curtain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cIn general,\u201d notes The Narrator (Jeffrey Wright<\/a>) in Olivier Assayas<\/a>\u2019s engrossing political drama, \u201cthings in Russia go pretty well. But when they go bad, they go really bad.\u201d Though it is set almost entirely within the realpolitik of early 21st century Moscow, The Wizard of the Kremlin<\/a> offers a warning to the West about how that state of affairs came to be. Beginning in 2019 and flashing back and forth, it tells a story that harks back to the ascension of Adolf Hitler, as facilitated by German chancellor Franz von Paper in 1932, but also anticipates what\u2019s happening now in the States, as Donald Trump\u2019s administration sets about making Project 25, once written off as an authoritarian pipe dream, a reality.<\/p>\n

\n\tFascism is an easy word to bandy about, and The Wizard of the Kremlin is not about that; it\u2019s about the modern concept of fake democracy, which is something much more toxic and concerning. And it\u2019s fitting that our guide into this murky territory is an academic, a man more inclined to see Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia as an extraordinary art project, since, unlike the West, Russia\u2019s poets and artists have more often flirted with the right than the left. A good example would be Eduard Limonov, subject of Kirill Serebrennikov\u2019s 2024 biopic Limonov: The Ballad; Assayas\u2019 co-writer Emmanuel Carr\u00e8re penned the book that film was based on, and his subject makes a very important cameo, at a crucial moment, here.<\/p>\n

\n\tLimonov, being dead, is one of the few characters appearing under his own name, and a pre-film credit assures us that The Wizard of the Kremlin is a work of fiction. It is obviously a complete coincidence, then, that its focus, and the man our narrator has travelled so far to meet, looks uncannily like Vladislav Surkov, an avant-garde playwright who rose without trace to become Putin\u2019s key strategist. His name is Vadim Baranov, and Paul Dano<\/a> plays him as a charming human smokescreen, speaking with an almost entirely uninflected accent, giving nothing away with his pudgy, boyishly round poker face.<\/p>\n

\n\tBaranov is retired now, he tells the narrator, and he proceeds to look back at his extraordinary life story. Unusually, it seems that he is very reliable narrator, and the odd thing about him is that, for a spin doctor, he is entirely upfront. But that, in part, is what The Wizard of the Kremlin is all about: when truth is abandoned, what does honesty mean \u2014 and do facts even matter at all? These ideas are already percolating in Beranov\u2019s head as he flirts with punk under Gorbachev\u2019s progressive regime, inspired by Mayakovsky and the Russian Futurists to stage some truly terrible plays.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Baranov is bored of trying to reflect his times, he wants to be part of them, which is how he becomes involved with reality TV and powerful television producer Boris Berezovski (Will Keen). Like many other Russians that come into Baranov\u2019s orbit, Berezovski is enjoying the fruits of perestroika, blurring the boundaries of business and politics that will later lead to several assassination attempts and his sudden, unexpected death at 67. It is through Berezovski that Baranov meets Vladimir Putin (Jude Law<\/a>), a former KGB agent who, initially, refutes Berezovski\u2019s attempt to groom him as a potential replacement for Boris Yeltsin, portrayed here as crude, flaky and very, very drunk.<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, we know how that went, but as entertaining as it is in streamlining the backroom negotiations that ensued, The Wizard of the Kremlin is a very thoughtful attempt to unpack the current moment. It\u2019s impossible not to see how vital TV has been in this regard, and, like Donald Trump is doing now, Putin was quick to militate against his detractors, even forcing satirical show Kukly (Dolls) off the air after taking offence at his dopey puppet likeness. More importantly, the film shows how extreme ideologies create strange bedfellows, which Baranov uses to his advantage, funding underground biker militias and esoteric religious headbangers alike as ballast to prop up Putin\u2019s hardline rule.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnusually, though it clocks in at a hefty 156 minutes, it seldom drags, and it\u2019s almost disappointing that Assayas, who did such a great job with Carlos (2010) didn\u2019t take the mini-series route here too. Performance-wise, Jude Law is a surprisingly effective Putin, getting the President\u2019s pout to perfection, and giving him a slightly abrasive Estuary English accent. Dano, meanwhile, is up to something much more mysterious and mannered, speaking in a gentle singsong that takes a little bit of getting used to. Physically, he\u2019s a good fit for the role too, putting a benign face on a character who borders on sociopathic.<\/p>\n

\n\tRemember, silver-tongued cult leader Charles Manson had the ear of many influential people (including The Beach Boys\u2019 Dennis Wilson, who christened him The Wizard), and so did Grigori Rasputin, mystic to the tsars, to whom Baranov is frequently compared. But as this sharp, insightful story shows, sometimes the most dangerous influencers wear a tie and come clean shaven.<\/p>\n

\n\tTitle: The Wizard Of The Kremlin
Festival: Venice (Competition)
Director: Olivier Assayas
Screenwriters: Olivier Assayas and Emmanuel Carr\u00e8re, from the novel by Giuliano da Empoli
Cast: Jeffrey Wright, Paul Dano, Jude Law, Alicia Vikander<\/a>, Tom Sturridge, Will Keen
Sales agent: Gaumont
Running time: 2 hrs 36 mins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIn general,\u201d notes The Narrator (Jeffrey Wright) in Olivier Assayas\u2019s engrossing political drama, \u201cthings in Russia go pretty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[51180,96,51181,51182,2839,51183,51184,263,51185,56,54,55,10306],"class_list":["post-105162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-alicia-vikander","tag-entertainment","tag-jeffrey-wright","tag-jude-law","tag-movies","tag-olivier-assayas","tag-paul-dano","tag-review","tag-the-wizard-of-the-kremlin","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}