What The Wizard of the Kremlin gets wrong about Russia
The film *The Wizard of the Kremlin*, starring Jude Law as Vladimir Putin and Paul Dano as his adviser, offers a fictionalized account of Putin's rise to power but fails to capture the authenticity of Russian culture and setting. Based on a novel by Giuliano da Empoli, the film is criticized for its lack of Russianness, with unconvincing performances and inauthentic locations. While the narrative follows key historical events accurately, the execution falls short of the book's subtlety and depth.
- ▪The film *The Wizard of the Kremlin* is based on a novel by Francophone Swiss writer Giuliano da Empoli, first published in 2022.
- ▪Jude Law portrays Vladimir Putin and Paul Dano plays Vadim Baranov, a fictional character based on Putin adviser Vladislav Surkov.
- ▪The film was shot in Latvia, which the reviewer criticizes as an inauthentic substitute for Russia, affecting the realism of settings like the Kremlin and Russian forests.
- ▪Key historical moments depicted include the 1996 Russian presidential election, the Kursk submarine disaster, and Putin’s confrontation with oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
- ▪The book uses real names such as Khodorkovsky, while the film substitutes fictional names like Dmitri Sidorov for some figures.
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What The Wizard of the Kremlin gets wrong about Russia Jude Law and Paul Dano fail to convince as Putin and his Rasputin-like adviser. i imdb dataLayer.push({ event: 'author', author: "Mary Dejevsky" }) Mary Dejevsky 29th April 2026 i imdb Share Topics Books Culture Politics World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. It has to be pure coincidence that a new flurry of Western speculation about Vladimir Putin’s hold on power in the Kremlin comes hard on the heels of the UK release of Olivier Assayas’s film, The Wizard of the Kremlin, a lightly fictionalised account of the 30 years in which Putin rose to become president and Russia’s ever more dominant leader.
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