Dir: Olivier Assayas | Cast: Paul Dano, Alicia Vikander, Tom Sturridge, Will Keen, Jude Law | 152′ Political Thriller
Reviewed by Ian Long
Having bowed out of frontline politics, Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), a former adviser to Vladimir Putin, seems free to relax in the library of his rural retreat and enjoy his young daughter’s company. When an American academic arrives to interview him, intrigued by their shared interest in the novelist Yevgeny Zamyatin (an early critic of the Soviet system), the stage appears to be set for a cosy exchange. But The Wizard of the Kremlin ultimately suggests that no one ever really retires from Russian politics, no matter how hard they may try.
Baranov’s reminiscences begin with his youth in post-Cold War Moscow. A tsunami of freedom – or, at least, licence – has shattered social norms, putting everything up for grabs and enabling some people to grab a great deal. Surfing the feverish swirl, Baranov starts a career as an avant-garde theatre director.
At a wild party, he’s enthralled by a stunning young woman Ksenia (Alicia Vikander) who declaims a song while riding on the back of a cowled male slave. But she loftily informs him that she’s not really a performer, perhaps feeling this would detract from her primary goal – of attaching herself to the men who embody power in the new Russia. This game-plan is soon demonstrated by her abrupt dumping of Baranov in favour of his friend Dmitri Sidorov (Tom Sturridge), just when the latter happens to morph from a fast-talking moneyman into a super-wealthy plutocrat.
Meanwhile, Baranov makes his own move from theatre to TV, where his new employer, the oligarch Boris Berezovsky (Will Keen), enlists him in his plan to “stop making up stories and start creating reality.” They begin by – quite literally – propping up the ailing Boris Yeltsin in the dying days of his premiership. Then, fatefully, Berezovsky takes Baranov to FSB headquarters to meet an obscure lieutenant-colonel called Vladimir Putin (Jude Law), whose seemingly calm detachment masks a smouldering sense of purpose.
Initially set up as a Kane-like voyage into the enigma that is Baranov, the story now reveals its true subject, which is the reign of Putin – un-ironically referred to throughout as ‘the Tsar’. Berezovsky clearly hopes that the ambitious secret policeman will prove a more advantageous puppet than the decrepit Yeltsin, but it soon becomes clear that the mogul is playing with fire. Occasional furious outbursts reveal the depth of Putin’s identification with the Russian state, his personal affront at the disrespect that it‘s received from the world, and his iron determination to rectify this by restoring its full integrity.
The film covers numerous historical turning points as Putin seizes initiative and wealth back from the oligarchs and begins the task of reconquering former territories. Framing the story with the academic’s interview allows Baranov’s voiceover to guide us through its intricacies. It’s the method Scorsese used in films like Goodfellas and Casino and is a good choice, enabling the audience to deal with a sizeable payload of exposition and to absorb a refresher course in recent Russian history while following a complex and energetic narrative.
Not everything in the story works. Arguably, a startling final turn isn’t fully set up, and I found it hard to discern the chemistry in the relationship between Baranov and Ksenia, who reunite later in the tale. Vikander radiates a charismatic sexuality and ferocious appetite for life, while Paul Dano’s Baranov is doughy and epicene, a cypher-like figure with an inexpressive face and a voice which barely rises above a discreet murmur. Is Dano determined to outdo Alec Guinness at his most opaque? Or does he feel that viziers and henchmen need such an inscrutable façade to flourish?
These cavils aside, The Wizard is an absorbing drama and a laudably ambitious attempt to give shape to recent world events, made by a director whose work is always well worth watching. An element that particularly struck me was its depiction of the contingency of human personality, and how rapid social change makes chameleons of us all. Adamov, Ksenia, Sidorov and others mutate before our eyes, shape-shifting, as we all must, to survive the wild fluctuations in their environment.
NOW IN UK CINEMAS | WORLD PREMIERE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2025