THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN
The Enigma of Power in Putin’s RussiA

di Leila Tavi

 

When Olivier Assayas premiered The Wizard of the Kremlin at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, the announcement was accompanied by curiosity and skepticism. The French director, long admired for his meditations on identity and politics in Carlos (2010) and Irma Vep (1996, 2022), now turned his camera to one of the most enigmatic figures of the Putin era.

The film, which entered the official competition with the title Le Mage du Kremlin, is adapted from Giuliano da Empoli’s acclaimed 2022 novel with the same title. Da Empoli, a Swiss-Italian political scientist and essayist who teaches at Sciences Po Paris, crafted a hybrid narrative: part allegory, part fictionalized memoir, inspired by the real-life Kremlin strategist Vladislav Surkov. In Assayas’s hands, this novelistic material becomes a cinematic exploration of manipulation, media, and the corrosion of democratic culture in contemporary Russia.

 

But behind the fictional Vadim Baranov, played with icy opacity by Paul Dano, lurks the shadow of Surkov himself—an avant-garde intellectual turned political engineer who embodied, perhaps more than any other figure, the logic of post-Soviet power.

 

From Literature to Cinema

 

Published in French in 2022 by Gallimard, Le Mage du Kremlin quickly became a literary sensation. The novel won the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française and was translated into more than twenty languages. Giuliano da Empoli, already known for his essays on populism and European politics, created in the book a fictional confidant of Putin, Vadim Baranov, whose voice narrates the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the rise of oligarchic capitalism, and the reassertion of a vertical system of authority in Russia.

 

Da Empoli’s background as a professor of political science at Sciences Po Paris gives the book an analytical edge: while it reads like a novel, it constantly gestures toward real political doctrines and media strategies. Critics in France and Italy noted how the book blurred the line between fiction and political commentary, much like Surkov himself blurred the line between propaganda and art.

 

Assayas’s film adaptation translates this literary ambiguity into cinematic terms. Structured in episodic chapters, the movie traverses historical flashpoints—the Second Chechen War, the sinking of the Kursk submarine, the Orange Revolution, Euromaidan—while never leaving the subjective gaze of Baranov. It is less a historical fresco than a psychological map of power.

 

Vadim Baranov: Fictional Architect of Illusions

 

On screen, Baranov is not an overt villain. He speaks in measured tones, often from the shadows, crafting doctrines rather than issuing orders. Assayas frames him as both insider and outsider: a cultural mediator who sees politics as a stage and citizens as an audience to be captivated, deceived, and mobilized.

 

Paul Dano’s performance carries much of the weight. Known for his capacity to portray fragile yet unsettling characters (There Will Be Blood, The Batman), Dano brings to Baranov a quiet menace: he is unreadable, even when speaking in intimate whispers. His doctrine begins as a marketing game—tickling collective instincts for ratings and profit—but soon evolves into a theory of “vertical power,” a belief that Russia, forged by violence, requires a strongman to lead.

This fictional trajectory is unmistakably modelled on Vladislav Surkov, though Assayas avoids direct biography.

 

Vladislav Surkov: The Real “Wizard”

 

Surkov (b. 1964) is one of the most paradoxical figures of Putin’s Russia. A former theater director, advertising executive, and patron of conceptual art, he became deputy chief of the presidential administration and chief ideologue of “sovereign democracy”—a doctrine that asserted Russia’s right to an illiberal political system under the guise of electoral legitimacy.

He was the mastermind behind United Russia’s electoral strategies, the co-optation of opposition movements, and the orchestration of pro-Kremlin youth groups. He also nurtured an ecosystem of controlled dissent, allowing marginal opposition parties to exist as stage props in a managed democracy.

 

Critics compared him to a postmodern Machiavelli. Surkov drew on literature and theater in crafting propaganda, once citing Alice in Wonderland as a political manual. Under his influence, the Kremlin did not merely repress; it performed, using media saturation and disinformation to generate a reality in which truth itself became relative.

 

By the mid-2010s, Surkov’s influence waned. He was sidelined after disagreements over the Donbas war but remained a symbol of Putinism’s reliance on manipulation rather than ideology.

 

Jude Law as Putin

 

If Baranov embodies the mastermind, Jude Law takes on the more daunting role: Vladimir Putin himself. His interpretation avoids caricature, leaning instead on restraint and a measured physicality. Law lowers his voice, calibrates his posture, and adopts a stillness that suggests latent menace rather than overt aggression. The result is a Putin who is more inscrutable than theatrical, a figure who dominates the screen through silences and subtle gestures.

 

Critics noted that Law managed to humanize without softening—conveying both the icy control of the leader and the unsettling ordinariness of a man whose decisions shape the fate of nations. His performance has been singled out as one of the film’s anchors, grounding Assayas’s fresco of manipulation in a chillingly recognizable presence.

 

Assayas’s Vision

 

Assayas does not film Surkov directly; instead, he stages an allegory. The Wizard of the Kremlin unfolds like a palimpsest, where history and fiction overlap. Archival-style inserts evoke the Kursk tragedy or Chechen battlefields, but they are refracted through Baranov’s narration, reminding viewers that even “reality” is mediated by propaganda.

 

The film’s style is deliberately restrained. The mise-en-scène is sober, the pacing contemplative, the editing elliptical. Some critics in Venice praised this sobriety as a form of lucidity; others argued it drained the film of cinematic urgency.

 

Still, the film’s power lies less in spectacle than in tone: Assayas cultivates unease, showing how manipulation is less about shouting than about whispering.

 

Global Echoes: Populism and Media Politics

 

Though rooted in Russia, the film resonates far beyond. Baranov’s doctrine—that mass politics can be engineered by appealing to primal instincts, that truth is malleable—echoes trends visible in Berlusconi’s Italy, Trump’s America, and Bolsonaro’s Brazil.

 

Da Empoli himself had noted these parallels in his essays on populism. Assayas extends them visually, intercutting Russian events with images of Western populist rallies. The suggestion is clear: Baranov is not a Russian anomaly but a global archetype.

 

This universalism is also what some Russian critics, writing in exile, found troubling. Reviews in independent outlets like Meduza and Novaya Gazeta Europe described the film as powerful but alien, too Western in its framing. By casting English-speaking actors and scripting in English, Assayas risks turning Russia into a mirror for Western anxieties.

 

The Role of Memory and Identity

 

The novel Le Mage du Kremlin was praised for its ambiguous narrator, who oscillates between admiration and cynicism. Assayas retains this ambiguity. Baranov is neither fully a monster nor a tragic hero; he is a technician of power.

 

The film also meditates on memory. In one striking sequence, Baranov recalls the Soviet army’s withdrawal from East Germany in 1990. “They were not coming back from war,” he reflects, “but moving toward one.” This line, borrowed from documentary material shot by co-director Andriy Alferov, encapsulates the cyclical fatalism of Russian history: yesterday’s victors are tomorrow’s invaders.

 

Reception at Venice

 

At Venice, The Wizard of the Kremlin polarized audiences. Some critics hailed it as a daring political fresco; others dismissed it as distant and overly didactic. The debate mirrored the novel’s reception: admired for insight, questioned for authenticity.

 

Notably, Jude Law’s cameo as a Western diplomat drew attention, though the focus remained squarely on Paul Dano’s Baranov. His portrayal, critics noted, was chilling precisely because of its restraint—an interpretation of power as indifference.

 

Why It Matters

 

Why should a French novel and film about Russian politics matter to global audiences in 2025? Because both illuminate the mechanics of authoritarianism in the digital age. Surkov’s genius was to turn politics into a spectacle where no one could be sure of the truth. Baranov, as his fictional avatar, embodies this philosophy.

 

As Europe struggles with populism, disinformation, and the erosion of liberal democracy, The Wizard of the Kremlin functions as a cautionary tale. It reminds viewers that authoritarian power does not only impose itself with tanks; it seduces, distracts, and narrates.

 

Conclusion

 

Assayas’s film is not definitive history, nor was da Empoli’s novel. Both are fables about power, crafted in different media but converging on the same figure: the enigmatic “wizard” who manipulates reality.

 

Surkov, the real-life inspiration, remains elusive, a man of paradoxes who once wrote postmodern short stories even as he engineered repression.

 

Baranov, his cinematic double, is no less elusive. He is a mirror in which Russia, and perhaps the West, can glimpse their own fragility.

 

In this sense, The Wizard of the Kremlin is more than a film. It is a meditation on how democracies can collapse not with a bang, but with a whisper.