French director Olivier Assayas is no stranger to difficult men.
In the past, he’s tackled controversial characters embroiled in high-stake political schemes, such as the Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (“Carlos”) and the espionage ring known as the Cuban Five (“WASP Network”). Yet, in “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” his timely English language feature debut, the French director pushes the envelope further with a subtle, at times darkly comic portrayal of Vladimir Putin (Jude Law). The film charts the Russian leader’s ascent to power amid post-Soviet chaos, aided by versatile spin doctor Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano) — a fictional character inspired by real-life fixer, Vladislav Sourkov.
Adapted by Assayas and Emmanuel Carrère from Giuliano da Empoli’s 2022 bestselling book “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” the film should trigger heated debate when it premieres at the Venice Film Festival, especially considering Russia’s war with Ukraine is still raging.
Speaking to Variety on the eve of the festival, Assayas says he envisioned “The Wizard of the Kremlin” as an exploration of the foundation of the “modern political world,” rather than just the “origin story of Putin.”
He knows the multi-faceted portrayal of Putin could inspire some blowback. Assayas quips that he’s “neither the first nor the last to portray terrible characters,” citing “Scarface,” “The Godfather,” “Nosferatu” and his own Emmy-nominated “Carlos” as examples of previous looks at ethically challenged protagonists.
“I have always felt that, deep down, this question of evil and its ambiguity is something that belongs to cinema and has always belonged to cinema,” he says, before quoting Alfred Hitchcock, “who said that the more successful the villain is, the better the film.”
Assayas contends, however, that audiences are “perhaps less accustomed to portraying political evil,” which “is not something we show, it is something we endure.”
“What makes this film unique, and ultimately what fascinated me, was precisely that it showed the consequences of political evil, but also tried to portray its nature. How it works, its inner workings,” says Assayas.
While Assayas says he and Emmanuel Carriere tried to be accurate, they did fictionalize some scenes, and fleshed out the book’s only major female character, Ksena, Baranov’s on-and-off lover played by Alicia Vikander. The role was written with Vikander in mind, given that Assayas recently worked with her on “Irma Vep.”
On his collaboration with both Law and Dano, Assayas said he was impressed with their level of dedication. Law “completely transformed and reinvented (Putin) and made him very believable,” says Assayas, who admits he was “amazed at how much (Law) needed to feel involved, invested and understand all the ins and outs of the character, both the worst and the less worst, in order to get it right.” Dano, equally invested, “impressed (Assayas) with his interest, his involvement, his immersion in Russian politics.”
“He would send me things he had found in obscure corners of the internet which related to the film, which related to the story, which clarified this or that aspect of our narrative, and he would ask me about certain phrases, about the ambiguities of this or that situation,” says Assayas.
In spite of its all-star cast (also including Will Keen as Boris Berezovsky; Tom Sturridge as Dmitri Sidorov, a character allegedly inspired by a real-life oligarch; and Jeffrey Wright as an American author) and well-respected production partners, producer Olivier Delbosc and French studio Gaumont, “The Wizard of the Kremlin” wasn’t an easy project to finance, Assayas says, because of its scope and political implications.
“This film was particularly difficult to put together because it’s a story that takes place in Russia, in places that exist but to which we didn’t have access. It was unimaginable that we would shoot in Russia,” says Assayas. Ultimately, “The Wizard of the Kremlin” shot entirely in Latvia, where “production costs were lower than in most countries.”
Most importantly, “no other country had a setting that could represent the Kremlin, another that could represent the summer home of the Russian president or Novo-Ogaryovo, his suburban residence,” says Assayas.
He says “The Wizard of the Kremlin” showcases such a diversity of locations and settings that “if we hadn’t filmed in Latvia, we would have had to film in five, six, or seven different countries.”
The world premiere of “The Kremlin of the Wizard” on the Lido marks Assayas’ big comeback to Venice, which he describes as a “special place for (him).”
“It’s in Venice that I screened my first feature, ‘Désordre,’ in 1986 and we got the Fipresci Prize, the Critics Prize, and that was the beginning of the film’s career, and it was a big deal for me at the time.”
Assayas went on to present several films in Venice over the years, including “Wasp Network” in 2019, “Non-Fiction” in 2018, and “Something in the Air” in 2012.
“The Wizard of the Kremlin” is taking Assayas out of his comfort zone after a pair of highly personal projects, the HBO mini-series “Irma Vep” and “Suspended Time.”
“I felt that I needed to renew myself, try new things, go elsewhere,” says Assayas, who’s still grieving over his canceled U.S. project “Idol’s Eye” which was meant to star Robert Pattinson and Robert de Niro and shoot in Chicago and Toronto in 2014. Did he ever imagine that his first big English-language movie would take place in Russia?
“I would never have imagined it. It would never even have crossed my mind!” says Assayas.
Here are some highlights from Variety’s interview with Olivier Assayas:
Can we describe “The Wizard of the Kremlin” as the origin story of Vladimir Putin?
The story of how Vladimir Putin gradually became (Russia’s leader) is something that has not been told or understood with the accuracy and precision of Giuliano’s book which has something that has to do with the origin story, although I would say that it’s the origin story of the modern political world rather than Putin’s. It’s the moment when something takes root, whose consequences we see every day today. It’s a transformation of the way politics works. It was during that period, in those circles, that it took hold and gradually gained ascendancy over traditional politics.
Putin and Baranov, his advisor, are despicable characters. Are you afraid of stirring some criticism about the way you’re portraying them?
“Carlos” was a very ambitious film about a detestable character, and I have always felt that, deep down, this question of evil and its ambiguity is something that belongs to cinema and has always belonged to cinema. Hitchcock said that the more successful the villain is, the better the film. Think of Francis Coppola’s “Godfather” or “Nosferatu.” I’m neither the first nor the last to portray terrible characters. Howard Hawks was even criticized for this when he portrayed “Scarface.” But let’s say that we are less accustomed to portraying political evil. Political evil is not shown, it is endured. We show those who endure it. And it’s true, the uniqueness of this film, and ultimately what fascinated me, was precisely to show the consequences of political evil, but also to try to portray its nature, its inner workings.
What compelled you the most when you read Giuliano da Empoli’s book?
I found that one of the strengths of Giuliano’s portrayal of Vladimir Putin is that he found a villain (Baranov) who is a match for Putin’s story, someone who embodies the evil of his era in many ways, but who, at the same time, is human like all of us. I still have this conviction that everyone carries within them the totality of humanity, for better or for worse, without distinction. I think there is something that illuminates human beings, even within evil. And perhaps evil even better embodies the complexities of humanity than more watered-down things.
Did you know a lot about this chapter of Russian history when you read the book?
Not at all, and what really interested me in the book and in how to adapt it, was showing a historical episode that I knew little about. Everything I discovered, I felt was interesting for the film, because the film’s audience would discover it just as I did, through Giuliano’s talent as a portraitist, but also through his intelligence, his sense of nuance and precision, and the sharpness of his gaze. I found that Giuliano da Empoli was able to recount things that are very complicated to grasp in a romanesque, intelligent and original way. He managed to do so in terms that I felt would appeal to cinema-goers. But at the same time, I was dragging my feet a bit at first, thinking that it was going to be very complicated because there’s a lot of dialogue. Basically, it was not that easy to find a cinematic approach.
So how did you approach the adaptation with Emmanuel Carrière?
I’ve known Emmanuel Carrère forever because we started out as journalists together. I was writing for Les Cahiers du cinéma, and he wrote for Télérama and Positif. I said to myself, “I’m going to tell a Russian story. I’m not Russian myself. I don’t really know much about recent Russian political history.” And I thought it would be valuable to work with someone like Emmanuel who has a much finer and deeper knowledge of Russia than I do. When writing the screenplay with Emmanuel, I tried to be as faithful as possible to Giuliano da Empoli’s book because it’s very beautiful and it was the success of the book that, ultimately, brought us all together. But while we didn’t take too many liberties with it, I knew I had to take some in order to make the film more visual, more romantic. The weakest point of the book was the character of Ksenia, the main female character. So the first two questions I asked myself when adapting the book, were how to make the character of Ksenia central to the film, and because the book is a little wordy, we worked with these issues constantly in mind.
How accurate is the film historically speaking?
When you’re working on a project like this, you have to do the work of a journalist or a historian. We didn’t compromise on truthfulness and accuracy because it was proofread and validated by historians who are much more familiar than I am with the details of this period. We had a thousand practical questions for them every day when we were writing and when we were preparing the film.
One of the very positive aspects of making the film in Latvia was that we were able to have access to first-hand knowledge of the history, the characters, and so on, and so nothing was left to chance. Latvia has quite a few Russian refugees that allowed us to have actors with Russian accents and I was able to complete my research, validate the historical reconstruction, etc., with first-hand accounts from political journalists and Russian who emigrated. Even our local executive producers in Latvia used to have a political talk show. So they met Boris Berezovsky and most of the key figures in Russian politics at the time. Whenever I had a question, a doubt or a query, I would of course call Giuliano first to ask him to validate a particular option. Because, once again, this is very similar to the way I worked when I made “Carlos.” That is to say, I believe that when dealing with politics, and contemporary politics in particular, it is essential to be extremely precise about the facts, even if there are ways to tell a story in a more human way.
We already know the character of Baranov is fictional and allegedly inspired by Vladislav Sourkov. How did Giuliano da Empoli learn so much about Putin and Sourkov’s relationship and conversations?
One of the first times I met Giuliano, I said to him, ‘You must have contacts within the Russian state apparatus and informants who give you such precise knowledge of the facts and the inner workings, the mechanisms.’ He said to me, ‘No, I’ve been to Russia four times in my life. Yes, of course, I’ve met people, but that’s not what inspired me.’ He said to me, ‘What inspired me was the fact that I worked as the advisor of a politician.’ An important politician, since it was Matteo Renzi who served as Italy’s prime minister from 2014 to 2016. As a young man, Giuliano wrote Renzi’s speeches and he was observing the political world of his times through this prism. And as such “The Wizard of the Kremlin” is certainly about Vladimir Putin, but it also talks about the contemporary workings of politics. That’s what Giuliano told me, right away, ‘Power is the same wherever you are. It’s how you get it and how you keep it. That’s it.’
Did you connect with Sourkov to discuss the film?
Sourkov is a complicated issue, because basically, I didn’t know he existed. I literally didn’t know. At one point, I understood that Giuliano had used a real person, but in reality, that was more of a hindrance than anything else, firstly because he is, honestly, a rather detestable character, and secondly, because he is much less interesting than Giuliano da Empoli’s Vadim Baranov. I said to myself: I’ll forget about Sourkov, I’m not interested in him, I’m interested in the more complex, richer, more human, broader version of this character created by Giuliano. And then, of course, there is a lot of ambiguity that forced me to be very vigilant, because when I discussed specific historical points with Russian interlocutors, they immediately saw Sourkov, but I sought to distance myself from him rather than anything else. But it’s true, there was a side to Sourkov that was a bit like Captain Haddock, which muddied the waters a little. We can’t completely dismiss him. His shadow is there.
There are some real-life characters in the movie besides Putin, of course.
Yes, there were a lot of things we had to be very careful about, especially in the portrayal of Dmitri Sidorov who is a real person whose name we changed because we didn’t want him to recognize himself and because legally it was a tricky situation. In the case of Boris Berezovsky, as he is no longer with us, we had much more freedom to portray him, which, in my opinion, makes him an even more interesting character. When it comes to Putin, from the point of view of our work, it was ambiguous because once again, we were not in his office in the Kremlin and no one else was there but himself and his interlocutor, and there is no recorded tape. So, in a way, he is someone to whom we attribute some dialogue, a discourse that corresponds to his political actions. We have a character who speaks and behaves like Vladimir Putin and whose mechanisms and workings are as true to life as possible. So, in a way, it is based not on the human truth of the character of Vladimir Putin, but on the historical truth of the President of the Russian Federation.
Do you think the movie is going to receive some blowback? It feels very timely given what’s happening in Ukraine.
Given the geopolitical context, honestly, I don’t know. When we were making the film, I had the impression that all that was almost behind us and that things would probably calm down and that, in a way, politically, the film might be a little bit dated by a few years or a few months, but in fact it’s not dated at all. We are even more in tune with the reality of what is happening in Ukraine today than we were when we wrote it two years ago.
How invested were Jude Law and Paul Dano in the project given its political dimension?
Let’s say they knew they were getting involved in something of that nature. Paul Dano impressed me with his interest, his involvement, his immersion in Russian politics. He would send me things he had found in obscure corners of the internet which related to the film, which related to the story, which clarified this or that aspect of our narrative. He would ask me about certain phrases, about the ambiguities of this or that situation. He was completely immersed and involved in what we were telling, including politically. It was the same for Jude Law, who, on top of everything else, had the enormous challenge of portraying Vladimir Putin, who he doesn’t actually look that much like. He completely transformed and reinvented him and made him very believable. He was very intimidated at first. He wanted to talk to Giuliano to get answers from someone who had a precise historical knowledge of the facts, who could also give him pointers on how to approach Putin, but I think he mainly watched a lot of newsreels. We provided him with a lot of material. He was extremely inquisitive. For me, it was quite fascinating to see how he absorbed information, complex, rich, varied, contradictory information, which generally exceeds the work of an actor and is closer to the work of a screenwriter or director. Ultimately I don’t think the question of resemblance is very important, what is important is the accuracy of the experience.
In ‘The Wizard of the Kremlin’ you’re reuniting with Alicia Vikander whom you directed in “Irma Vep.” Was the part of Ksenia written for her?
It’s inspired by Alicia. When we were writing, I had just finished filming the series “Irma Vep” and I realized how absolutely blown away I was by Alicia’s work, how she was such a great actress and had this ability to convey the most moving, empathetic things with comedy, with a freedom of performance, a freedom of invention, and freedom of transformation. I think the way I amplified and developed the character of Ksenia in the script has to do with Alicia’s personality, it was written for her.
You had that project “Idol’s Eye” a decade ago but it didn’t happen. Did you ever think you’d make your first English-language movie with a story set in Russia?
In Russia, no! I would never have imagined it. Honestly, that’s an excellent question. I’ll give you my answer: Never, it would never even have crossed my mind. But it’s true that I still regret “Idols’ Eye” which I was supposed to do between Chicago and Toronto. I’m not saying I wake up with it at night, but every time it crosses my mind, I really feel a terrible sense of frustration, because I knew there was a way to make a very beautiful film.
What are you going to do next?
My next film is also going to be in English. It’ll take place mostly in the U.S., and it’s rather in the vein of “Personal Shopper.”
