Berezovsky is looking for a sturdy, malleably corrupt successor to the Russian Federation’s fading president, drunken Boris Yeltsin. He settles on a balding, taciturn, slightly nondescript KGB officer named Vladimir Putin. Although Putin’s at first reluctant, Baranov persuades him to run for office by arguing that Russians have always needed — indeed craved — authority from the top.
Now there’s an idea that Putin can get behind. He quickly turns on the clever Berezovsky, who thought he could control his creation (always a mistake). And Baranov becomes Putin’s media guru until 2014, dreaming up things like Russia’s use of the internet to destabilize the West by flooding social media with extremist ideas.
The Wizard of the Kremlin contains so much sharp dialogue that I wish its story was more dramatic. While individual scenes brim with life — Assayas really knows how to evoke a society on the move — the action as a whole feels rushed, episodic and a tad abstract. For instance, Vikander’s character is less a full-fledged woman than an alluring symbol of Russia’s divided soul.
Yet despite all its flaws, the movie’s worth seeing just for Law’s portrayal of Putin, which isn’t merely juicy but revelatory. In his composed posture, ironic smile and flashes of anger, we sense what makes this man tick — his canniness, brutality, rough humor, paranoia and resentment of the West, which, he believes, tries to make him feel small. Watching Law’s Putin in action, I got a clearer sense of why this man — whom Baranov calls The Czar — jails or murders anyone he finds threatening and why he feels righteous about invading Ukraine.
