It may be oversimplifying things to say that “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” the new Olivier Assayas film starring Paul Dano and Jude Law, is “Interview with the Vampire” meets “The Apprentice,” but the comparison is probably welcome considering the latter film earned two Oscar nominations earlier this year for stars Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn.
The political drama, which just had its world premiere at the 82nd Venice Film Festival, is an adaptation of the 2022 novel of the same name by Giuliano da Empoli, about a young Russian artist named Vadim Baranov who descends into being the éminence grise to President Vladimir Putin.
While Dano’s Baranov is a fictional character, it’s Law’s turn as Putin that draws the most comparisons to “The Apprentice,” right down to anxieties about how taking on the role could possibly affect the actor’s personal life. “I hope not naively, but I didn’t fear repercussions,” said Law of playing Putin during the film’s festival press conference. “I felt confident in the hands of Olivier and the script, and that this was a story that was going to be told intelligently and with nuance and consideration. And we weren’t looking for controversy for controversy’s sake.”
He added, “It was key for me to remember that it’s a character within a much broader story. We weren’t trying to define anything about anyone.” Assayas explained that “The Wizard of the Kremlin” uses Putin’s ascension to power as a case study, but “the film is very much about how modern politics, 21st Century politics, were invented, and part of that evil raised from the rise to power of Vladimir Putin in Russia. So we made a movie about what politics has become and the very scary and dangerous situation we all feel we are in.” Putin is not the only authoritarian leader that would fit the narrative.
Law does not show up until about an hour into the film, but his take on Putin feels spookily accurate without becoming a distraction. “I needed to work with a great actor who will understand all the complex nuances of the character and who would recreate from the inside one part of whatever Vladimir Putin is,” said Assayas of casting Law for the role. “I needed someone who had the power and the intelligence and extraordinary skills to appropriate the character, and without looking like Vladimir Putin, becomes a vessel for what he represents, not physically, but intellectually, and historically, due to this historical moment we’re going through.”
The two-time Academy Award nominee later emphasized how his performance in “The Wizard of the Kremlin” was not supposed to be “an impersonation of Vladimir Putin, and [Assayas] didn’t want me to hide behind a mask of prosthetics. Nonetheless, he worked with an amazing makeup and hair team who, we had obviously a lot of references of that period of Putin’s life, and we’d just try to find a familiarity on me, I suppose. It’s amazing what a great wig can do.”
Ultimately, entering awards season, the major film festivals have so far garnered an influx of Best Actor contenders, and a shortage of Best Supporting Actor contenders, so Law’s transformative political role has the advantage on that front, but Dano has been a reliably great actor that has yet to receive an Oscar nomination. Given the opportunity to speak more about his role as “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” he could impress voters enough to gain recognition for the film. Describing his character’s journey during the press conference in compelling fashion, Dano said “if you were to just label a character like Baranov ‘bad,’ it would be a massive oversimplification, which does more harm than good. I think asking why, and looking into the gray, which can be scary, is better than letting us go further and further into black and white.”
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