In “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” actor Paul Dano plays Vadim Baranov, a character loosely inspired by a real-life advisor who helped Russian leader Vladimir Putin gain and keep power.
Vadim is a mild-mannered sort, happy to stay in the background, but there’s no doubt in Dano‘s mind that Vadim knows exactly what he’s doing.
“I mean, right from the title, ‘The Wizard of the Kremlin,’ we’ve seen it,” he says on a recent Zoom of Vadim’s ability to pull the strings of power like a magician on a darkened stage. “You even see it in a Disney film, the person behind the king.
“This was also a young man who wanted to be a theater director,” Dano continues. “He wasn’t trying to be the star of the show. You’re automatically the one trying to shape the piece and somebody else is the loud voice in the center.”
The film is directed by Olivier Assayas, who with Emmanuel Carrère adapted Giuliano da Empoli’s novel of the same name. In addition to Dano as Vadim, “The Wizard of the Kremlin” stars Jeffrey Wright as Rowland, an American writer to whom Vadim shares the story of his life, Alicia Vikander as Ksenia, Vadim’s once and again lover, and Jude Law as Putin.
Over three decades, it tells the story of Vadim as a theater student in the ’90s, a time when the crackup of the Soviet Union allowed Russia a period of freedom and opportunity until the oligarchs and later Putin took over. He goes with the flow, abandoning avant-garde theater for absurd reality TV programs.
Then an introduction to Putin, still a KGB official at the time, sets him on a path to shaping not just Putin and Russia, but large parts of the world as Putin’s power grows over the next two decades.
“I would not discuss him in terms of power,” Assayas says of Vadim. “I don’t see him as a powerful person. I see him as a very shrewd person. I see him also as a contemporary character. What can I say? He’s affected by the cynicism of his times.
“And Paul Dano has a complexity that few other actors have,” he adds on a separate Zoom call. “You know, he has this baby face, but at the same time, he can be extremely scary. [Vadim] sometimes projects control and authority, and at some point, he despises that.
“He’s someone who’s both evil and aware of the evil in him and fighting it in his own way. Paul brings the right level of complexity to the character that makes him believable. [Vadim’s] not a power-mad controlling person. He’s a chess player.”
“The Wizard of the Kremlin” opens in theaters Friday, May 15.
In interviews edited for length and clarity, Assayas and Dano talked about the relevance of the film to modern-day global politics, why the book initially seemed unfilmable to Assayas, and how he cast his four lead roles.
Q: Tell me how you came across the novel and decided to make a film of it.
OLIVIER ASSAYAS: We happened to be neighbors in Tuscany. Which doesn’t mean I knew Giuliano da Empoli, but I knew who he was, and he knew who I was because we had the same electrician working at our place. Then time passed, and he moved to Paris and wrote his first novel, “Wizard of the Kremlin.”
And he sent it to me, the dedication like a joke, saying, you know, “From your neighbor,” or whatever. The message was like, “I like your movies. If someone adapts this novel for the screen, I’d be happy if you had a shot at it.” And so I got the book, sat down, read, found it amazing.
I was surprised because I had no idea what this book was about. I could have been bored after 10 pages; it happens often. But no, I read it with excitement. I thought it was just fascinating. I thought it captured something very profound in the terms of the politics of our modern world.
But I didn’t feel – I felt it was a very, very tough novel to transcribe into film.
Q: Why was that?
ASSAYAS: Too much talk, not enough action. Too complex, dealing with Russian politics no one knows about. And this was never going to get made in Russia. [The film was ultimately shot mostly in Latvia.] Never to be shot with Russian actors. Never would we have access to Russian props, Russian furniture, Russian archives, footage. I mean, you name it.
So I was as nice as I could be, but I sent a message to Giuliano saying that I pass. I don’t think I can do this.
But after a while, the book became hugely successful, which means that i was wrong in terms of considering it too difficult for a mainstream audience. And also I started discussing the novel with my friend, the writer and filmmaker] Emmanuel Carrère, who ended up writing the screenplay with me.
He’s much more savvy than me in terms of Russian, post-Soviet politics. He’s Russian on his mother’s side. He has made documentaries in Russia. He has written books about Russia. He loved the novel. He thought this guy [Empoli] really does get it right, and so it’s worth looking a little bit further than you did.
So I kind of trusted him and we sat down and discussed. And gradually, I kind of realized that what seemed so complicated had fairly easy solutions.
Q: I want to ask about the character of Vadim, whom Olivier described as a chess player.
PAUL DANO: It felt right that he was a chess master, a puppeteer, and that he is casting a spell in his own way. It felt, I think, other characters are the ones who need to be seen as bigger or stronger. And everybody has their own version of what’s powerful, but I think his was from the wings.
Q: And as far as what Vadim is getting out of it? At one point, he tells Ksenia it’s just a game.
DANO: I don’t think everything he says is necessarily true, right? He succeeded in so many ways because he’s at the highest rung of power. But he’s also failed. He was trying to be a theater director, and then he went into reality TV, which is a super-cynical version of making art.
Finally, he found his talents rewarded in politics. And lost the person he loved [Ksenia]. So when he says it’s a game, I’m not even sure he believes that.
Q: Olivier, tell me a little about casting Paul, Jude, Alicia and Jeffrey as your main four characters.
ASSAYAS: Alicia was pretty much an obvious choice, but her character, Ksenia, is a minor character in the novel. She’s very light and conventional, so I entirely rewrote the character of Ksenia, who has become extremely important, if not central, to the narrative. It was really tailor-made for her.
I had worked with her on my HBO series “Irma Vep” [adapted from Assayas’ 1996 film of the same name]. I wanted to work with her again. She’s an extraordinary actress, so I never really considered anybody else.
Jeffrey Wright was an obvious choice from the start. He’s such a smart, subtle, inspiring person. He brings so much to a movie, I just hoped I could give him more screen time.
What was ultimately simple but scared me the most was, of course, representing Vladimir Putin. I didn’t want to use a Putin lookalike. The right approach was to find someone who could embody whatever Putin is. To reinvent that Putin from the inside as opposed to representing him from the outside. I knew I needed a great actor, a powerful actor.
I needed someone who could reinvent Putin both scary and powerful, which is what I wanted to show. I think that Jude understood it the way I understood and he found his own path towards Vladimir Putin. I let him find his own inner Vladimir Putin, and he was extraordinary.
Q: This is a modern story, set in Russia, but it feels like it’s relevant to any country, any time.
ASSAYAS: You know, the quest for power is something that has always driven politics and driven ambitious men. And it’s always for the same reason. You’re attracted to power, you want to grab power, and once you have grabbed power, the question is to keep it. That’s politics in the nutshell.
But what changes is the tools at the burning core of power. It’s usually propaganda; it’s manipulation in one form or another. But the issue of power never really changes. What changes are the methods. Propaganda in post-modern politics, the internet has become the ultimate propaganda tool.
Q: Vadim makes excuses to Ksenia, to Rowland, that he didn’t know what was really going on. That he’s not complicit.
DANO: I think he’s making excuses for himself because I think he’s complicit and knows that what he’s doing is not necessarily right. I think in that way it’s very complicated, but also I think that’s part of what’s truthful about it. I think that it’s easier for us to be complicit than we think.
Q: It’s a thing we’ve seen throughout history. Just following orders. Didn’t know. How easy do you think it is to just go along and not care?
DANO: I don’t know. I would like to think that it would be hard for me to do that.
For this character, it was about seeing your talents rewarded and getting actually a chance to be somebody. One of the things that I really liked in the film when I saw it was actually seeing [Vadim] play with his kid at the end. I found that kind of disturbing, actually.
Because you forget that the people all over the world making decisions that we may not agree with are then going home to their partner or their kid or their dog. And that’s kind of a shocking thing to remember because it’s a human being. And that’s tough. It’s complicated.