Olivier Assayas has never been an auteur to shy away from the labyrinthine structures of global systems. In his latest effort, *The Wizard of the Kremlin*, Assayas turns his lens toward the manufacture of the modern Russian state. Adapted from Giuliano da Empoli’s novel, the film is a sprawling, nearly three-hour meditation on the alchemy of power, casting Paul Dano as Vadim Baranov—a TV producer turned political strategist—and, in a move that borders on the surreal, Jude Law as a young Vladimir Putin.
The narrative is framed through the perspective of an academic narrator, played by Jeffrey Wright, who visits Baranov at his isolated estate. This device allows Assayas to trace Baranov’s trajectory from a cushy childhood in the Soviet civil service to his formative years in the chaotic, post-Cold War media landscape. It is here that Baranov, a fan of both high art and Tupac Shakur, is plucked from the "loudly brash" world of television by the oligarch Boris Berezovsky and thrust into the "quietly brash" corridors of the Kremlin.
Assayas treats the rise of the Putin era not merely as a historical sequence, but as a media project. The film oscillates between a straight biopic and a self-aware spoof, exploring a central binary: a West obsessed with the accumulation of capital versus an East driven by the raw exercise of power. While the film’s tonal shifts may leave some viewers adrift, its focus remains fixed on the "wizardry" required to transform a television producer’s creative urges into the foundational myths of a regime.
With reporting from Little White Lies.
Source · Little White Lies
