Original-Cin Q&A: Wizard of the Kremlin Director Olivier Assayas on Political Savagery
By Bonnie Laufer
The Wizard of the Kremlin by acclaimed writer-director Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper, Clouds of Sils Maria) dives headfirst into the world of high-stakes political maneuvering and master manipulation.
Based on the fictionalized 2022 novel by Giuliano da Empoli, the film follows the journey of rising KGB officer Vladimir Putin (Jude Law) as he aligns with master manipulator and spin doctor Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano). Together, they reshape life behind the Iron Curtain through a calculated reign of deception, corruption, and tyranny.
Fresh from its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and a successful North American debut at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the film has already garnered praise for its sharp insight into how "dangerous influencers" operate.
Ahead of its Canadian theatrical release on May 15 — read our review of the film here — we spoke with Assayas to discuss bringing this compelling power struggle to life and his long-standing connection with the Toronto film community.
ORIGINAL-CIN: Let’s discuss your enduring association with TIFF. I'm pretty sure all your films have either screened or premiered in Toronto. What is it about this festival that you love so much, because we love having you!
OLIVIER ASSAYAS: Well, the feelings are mutual. Coming to Toronto has been the opportunity of showing my films to the whole wide world. My early films were not at Cannes, and so they were shown in Toronto. I’m thrilled to say that Toronto adopted me, so, I kind of adopted Toronto in return. I've been friends with Atom Egoyan and his wife Arsinée Khanjian forever, and Niv Fichman co-produced my movie, Clean which I shot partly in Toronto. Let’s just say that Toronto has been very good to me.
O-C: The Wizard of the Kremlin is an adaptation of an award-winning novel. I would think it was quite challenging to take on someone else's source material.
OA: My first reaction was ‘No way, I'm not doing this.’ I loved the book. It's excellent and I love Giuliano. He's the sweetest guy but I'm not going to make this film. It's too complicated, too much trouble.
It's a film that takes place in Russia, and we don't have access to Russia. You can't use Russian actors, because they would never work again in their country. You don't have access to Russian sets, props, costumes… whatever. So, I thought if I start this process, it's really looking for trouble, and the Russians are not nice. Let’s just say Putin’s Russia are not people you want to be involved with in any way.
O-C: So, what made you change your mind?
OA: I realized this was something worth pursuing. It started with a conversation I had with Giuliano and started discussing the project with him. I asked him, ‘So I'm sure you have contacts in Russia, and I'm sure you have people, you have moles in the government or whatever, because what you describe in the book is so precise, so thoroughly researched and I was really impressed. So how did you function?’ He said to me, ‘I've been to Russia two or three times, but I don't speak Russian. I'm not an expert on Russia at all. But what I know is the inner workings of modern power.’
Giuliano was an advisor to Matteo Renzi when he was Prime Minister of Italy. He lived for a few years in the very fabric of European politics, and at that point I understood that this is not about the rise of Vladimir Putin but about how modern politics has been created. They have been redefined and how we all have this complex relationship now with politics because we hardly know how they function anymore. We know it's scary, it's confusing, and we have a sense of mass manipulation. We’ve lost any sense of clarity when it has to do with modern politics.
O-C: Watching this movie, you can't help but think you're watching what is going on in this world today. I know you didn't want to make a political film, but it sure makes you think.
OA: You are right, it’s not about politics. It's about the modern modalities of power and how someone gets that power. Power has always been one and the same thing ever since the Roman Empire. Politics are about how you access and grab power, and once you have grabbed it how you keep it and that hasn't changed an inch. What has been changing is propaganda. It is the way you manipulate how you fool people, how you fool them once, how you fool them twice and how you keep on fooling them. That's what's changed.
You have to invent new ways of fooling them and that changes with every generation, with every specific historical period. I had the impression that Giuliano’s book got that. He understands how politics, how propaganda and how postmodern politics have changed the world we live in, and he shows it exactly at the moment when it's happening. He puts the stage exactly at the core of the nuclear reactor of modern politics.
O-C: Let’s talk casting and start with Paul Dano. Why was he the right choice to embody someone as intellectually complex and morally ambiguous as Vadim Baranov?
OA: I couldn't think of someone who could do it better than him. I always admired Paul because I think he's such a sensitive, profound, and smart individual. He's also a complex individual. He has this kind of baby face, but at the same time he can be icy and scary. He can be seemingly honest and suddenly cynical. He can be telling the truth. With Paul you never know where the border is, where the line is and that's exactly what I wanted for this role. That complexity, that profundity and that humanity, especially when he gets closer to power.
O-C: What do you think it takes to be a good spin doctor?
OA: I think you have to be genuinely evil (laughs). You have to speak with a fork tongue. Some people go into politics for their ideas, which is very respectable. Except when it's not my ideas, I at least respect the honesty of it. You have people who get involved in politics out of cynicism, who see themselves as detached analysts. When you get involved in politics you are taking chances. You are taking risks, and you and you have to be involved. You can’t be detached.
O-C: Jude Law is almost unrecognizable as Putin. What was his initial reaction when you said, ‘I want you to play this man.’
OA: I honestly thought he would not even consider it. We've known each other for a while. We’ve been to film festivals together and we liked each other. Liking each other at a film festival means that we love the same films, and we agreed on a lot of films. We kind of stayed in touch and I always had in the back of my mind that one day I should make a film with Jude. When Putin came up, I didn't want a lookalike. I thought that would be the wrong approach. I wanted a great actor to reinvent him. Instead of representing him from the outside, he would represent him from the inside. Jude can bring something profound, something powerful, something charismatic, which are the attributes of a character like Vladimir Putin, and I thought that he brought his own approach.
O-C: He certainly did.
OA: I don't really direct actors. I let them do their homework. In this case I provided as much research as I could. I sent him documentaries, books, essays, whatever I could find. He also wanted to meet Guliano (the novelist) to discuss Putin with him. Jude has his own process of preparing so he became something else, which is absolutely not the Vladimir Putin I had in mind when I was writing, but I think it ended up being a much better, more interesting and more stimulating version of him that I initially envisioned.
O-C: After making this film has your own understanding of power or storytelling changed?
OA: I think it forced me to have a more subtle analysis of modern politics. I've always been interested in geopolitics and made movies that deal with geopolitics. My understanding of power, it's not like I discovered that there was a problem with postmodern politics and with post–social media politics, but I kind of understood how it became so prominent. Why? Because what is exciting in Guliano's book is that it is very much at the core of the moment when it happened, when politics changed, and it became the blueprint for so many evil politicians all over the world.
It’s interesting to put your camera at the moment when it's happening in the place where it is happening and do it before any other filmmaker. What was most exciting for me was dealing with politics in ways that you don't deal with politics usually in movies. I hope it provokes good discussions.