Florida's Film, Television and the Arts Magazine
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The Wizard of the Kremlin: Nowhere Near Kitsch Enough
The Wizard of the Kremlin is probably less of a disappointment if you do not already have a relationship with Olivier Assayas’ films, instead something to be written off as a lethargic Wikipedia article with odd stylistic choices and a lack of tonal clarity. Assayas has one of the richest filmographies of any working filmmaker from heavy hitters like Irma Vep, to Carlos, to Personal Shopper to the sleeper picks like Cold Water and Winter’s Child. Especially in the 21st century, Assayas has solidified a brand of filmmaking that can be a bit out there for a mainstream audience that is not familiar with his filmography – see the puzzled reactions out of the Regal Mystery Screening that I attended. With a working knowledge of the French filmmaker, Assayas’ latest effort comes across as the worst directorial entry of his career, a scatterbrained and didactic film so intent on being digestible for western audiences that it loses sight of any possible perspective that Assayas could have on Russia.
There is an inherent ghostly quality to the film considering the protagonist of the film Vadim Branov (Paul Dano) is a fictitious character set amongst portrayals of real people like Vladimir Putin (Jude Law) during Putin’s rise in the 1990s. On top of that, Assayas plays the hits, sending Branov through college as he finds an alluring woman, Ksenia (Alicia Vikander). Assayas spent his developmental years as a self-described revolutionary who juggled intense romances, and portraying that through a bit of autofiction is a rather bold and interesting starting place for Branov, albeit a concept that Assayas has utilized previously.
The Wizard of the Kremlin feels like the first time a film has gotten out of control for Assayas. The generally mannered performances that can be found in his films are much bigger and certainly less emotionally honest. Dano seemingly has no clue how to play the titular Wizard and devil on Putin’s shoulder. The behind the scenes dealmaker, whose arc theoretically functions as an allegory for that of Russia, is brash and meandering. There is no linear path from his work as a playwright to the functional minister of propaganda that the film presents. That might be the nugget that Assayas is attempting to get at. Once a bastion for communism, the Russian Federation under Putinism is chaos personified, functionally removed from the country’s history but still carrying on that legacy. The Russian Federation is significantly closer to a market driven economy than any reputation that the country drags through the mud. That disorder comes from a film that is downright stately formally. There are no overt attempts at humor outside of the garish title cards that come across like obligatory infodumps for the audience rather than a stylistic choice.
Assayas’ interest in this character study/satire of Russia is questionable at best. He has handled big political figures like Carlos the Jackal before with a comedic bite, but Putinism is this massive topic that feels far outside the scope of Assayas’ career. And scope becomes an immediate issue with The Wizard of the Kremlin. The film has so much ground to cover that it becomes more about covering a number of events than the real political ramifications of action within the film. Assayas falls back on mountains of narration from Branov, but rather than actually providing a perspective, it just becomes about getting as much information on the board as possible. The obvious comparisons of Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street make narration work stylistically because it is such a rapid and hectic cadence. Even a slower film like David Fincher’s The Killer has incredibly functional narration because it is set so firmly within the perspective of the titular killer. Along with many major political events in Eastern Europe, the film covers the London and Sochi Olympics with the grace of a Google AI Overview, shouting a string of facts in the hope that it provides an answer to the Russian Federation’s response to being put squarely on the global stage.
Assayas has spent so much time putting his own life experiences on screen that it is disappointing to see how little The Wizard of the Kremlin engages with potential ideas of the filmmaking process as a process by committee (or government.) Just about every European film these days has at least half a dozen studio and financier logos beforehand (this one even has a shocking Disney+ logo attached to it), and to not explore how governments can function like a film production and even finance them feels antithetical to the Assayas project. The film has so many factual specifics to offer like the annexation of Crimea, but is so thoroughly uninterested in detailing any political process like fixing an election or putting down a revolution. Part of what makes Assayas such a profound filmmaker is his love for the artform. There is rarely a time that you can sit down to watch one of his films and not feel him vibrating with joy at the idea of directing a scene. His work is tangible and generally investigates the implications of the physicality and processes that go into the labor of living and working. There is nothing particularly thorny or lively about The Wizard of the Kremlin outside of its punchline that unfortunately comes after 140 minutes of apathetic filmmaking.
