The Wizard of the Kremlin

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★★

Rated: MA15+

Directed by: Olivier Assayas

Based on the Novel by: Giuliano Da Empoli

Screenplay, adaptation and dialogues: Olivier Assayas and Emmanuel Carrère

Starring: Paul Dano, Alicia Vikander, Tom Sturridge, Jeffrey Wright, Jude Law, Will Keen, Andrei Zayats, Kaspars Kambala, Andris Keiss.

‘The first rule: don’t be boring.’

Opening with a disclaimer, The Wizard of the Kremlin is based on a novel written by, ‘Guiliano Da Empoli:

The film is adapted from the eponymous novel by Giuliano Da Empoli.

While it is based on historical events, it remains an original work of fiction with artistic intent.

The characters, as well as their statements and opinions, are fictional.

The screenplay, adapted by director Olivier Assayas (and Emmanuel Carrère) treat the main character, Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), a political figure based on Vladislave Surkov (a strategist and Putin’s top advisor), with less leniency than Guiliano since the novel was written before the Ukraine invasion.

And despite the disclaimer, the film is based on Putin’s rise to power, seeing behind closed doors to view the strategies and events leading to Russia’s initial freedom in the 90s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, to the once again, closed-curtain country of today.

The Wizard of the Kremlin begins with a fireside conversation between writer, Lawrence Roland (Jeffrey Wright) and now retired adviser, Vadim Baranov.  Lawrence, an American journalist, had written an essay for Foreign Affairs titled, ‘Vadim Baranov and the Invention of Fake Democracy’.  Ronald understood some of it, more than most, Baranov tells him.  But not all of it.

I was captured by those moments of prose spoken by the narrator, Roland, speaking of broody never-ending woods expanding all the way to Siberia, after he receives a mysterious invitation to find out more about the now retired, so called, ‘new Rasputin’.

Baranov is a man who doesn’t collect old books but reads them.

And he’s willing to speak of his past, his history because now he knows there is nothing better than spending his time drinking coffee and taking his daughter to school.

The film follows Baranov from his 20s, when the Soviet Union fell.  Where Gorbachev drinking milk and doubling the price of vodka set the people free.

Russia in the 90s was a place of chaos, freedom and the rise of the oligarchs; the nature of the oligarchs shown in Baranov’s friend, Dmitri (Tom Sturridge): a man Baranov wanted to write about but, now Dmitir’s too rich, ‘It’s over because you can’t tell me the truth.’

Baranov was a thespian.  And during the heady days of theatre met Ksenia (Alica Vikander): a person he’d never expect to meet again in a thousand years.

A free spirit, Ksenia could never stay long.

The poetics of dialogue written by Olivier Assayas and Emmanuel Carrère absorb and inspire.  There’s an echo of the novel’s voice in the film, the depth of thought behind the dialogue an insight into the turbulent times of Moscow, where everything was forgivable, except desertion: ‘What, you don’t want what we’d kill for?’

There’s the use of fade-outs to dissolve one scene to the next, so the prose of narration fades into the storyline of Putin’s rise to power, including the addition of historical footage to further anchor the narrative into the history of Russia’s political landscape.

The set of Jude Law’s mouth as he plays the part of Putin, sets the character trait of a quietly hardline FSB director turned political leader – a person to be watched as Baranov sees the irony in Putin’s eye as Boris Berezovsky, a mathematics professor turned oligarch and shadow adviser to Yeltsin, thinks he can tell Putin how to lead.

This is a film of political intrigue; of the subtilties of observation made by a man who understood the psychology of power and helped a man rise because he could.

Silence, waiting for the conversation to play out was the backbone, and the turn of phrase the tickle and entertainment of the movie.

The Wizard of the Kremlin is a subtle intelligent unfolding of a character who finds himself at the mercy of his own intellect.  Who lies to himself when he says he was always living in the future, because the truth is he was forced into the present, into the chaos, to drive the tide of change influencing the world at the bidding of a man tasked with pulling a nation from the ‘horizontal’ back to the, ‘vertical.’

I wasn’t caught up in the politics of watching the rise of Putin’s power, but was drawn to the adaptation of the novel, the thought-provoking ideas and turns of phrase.  There’s no noticeable soundtrack but instead of a dry film, the texture and delivery of dialogue make the film vast and subtle.