Jude Law portrays Putin in Olivier Assayas’ The Wizard of the Kremlin

Jude Law transforms as Putin in Assayas’ gripping political mystery.

Olivier Assayas’ political mystery “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on August 31, starred Jude Law as Vladimir Putin, the cruel leader of Russia.

“I didn’t think I would get in trouble, but I hope I wasn’t naive.” Law said at the movie’s official press conference in Venice on August 31, “I felt confident that Olivier and the script would tell this story in a smart, nuanced, and thoughtful way.” “We weren’t looking for trouble just for the sake of trouble.” This is a character in a bigger story. We were not trying to describe anyone in any way.

Based on Giuliano da Empoli’s best-selling book of the same name from 2022, “The Wizard of the Kremlin” is a story about Putin’s rise to power during the chaos of the end of the Soviet Union and his friendship with Paul Dano as Vadim Baranov, a spin doctor. It’s true that the second character is based on Vladislav Sourkov, a real-life fixer who’s been credited with having a big impact on Putin’s personality and authoritarian way of leading. The rest of the group is made up of Alicia Vikander, Tom Sturridge, and Jeffrey Wright, who all came to the press conference.

Law changed how he looked, but he chose to use his own voice instead of putting on a thick Russian accent to play a young Putin.

“Olivier and I talked about how this wasn’t supposed to be an interpretation of Putin, and he told me not to wear a mask of prosthetics.” We had a great team of people do our hair and makeup, and we knew about that time in Putin’s life. “We tried to figure out what we knew about me,” Law said. “A great wig can make you look great.”

While this was going on, Dano was more interested in looking into the inside of his character than the outside.

“I don’t think you need to look for a good thing, but you should be open to seeing things from the character’s point of view.” It would be way too easy to say that someone like Baranov is bad, and it would hurt the character more than help them, Dano said. “Why do we need to ask this?”

When someone asked Assayas if he thought Russia ruled the world, the director answered, “That’s an easy one.” The answer is “no.”

The movie does imagine where Putin came from, but the director went on to say that he sees “The Wizard of the Kremlin” as a warning about the “transformation of politics during our lifetime.”

“The movie is mostly about how modern politics came to be.” Assayas said, “Part of that evil came from Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in Russia.” “We made a movie about how scary and dangerous we all think politics has become.” “A lot of authoritarian leaders can use it.”

Russia’s ongoing full-scale attack on Ukraine makes the story even more important. These days, Putin has been in the news because he met with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has been trying to make a peace deal between Russia and the U.S. Wright gave another reason why “The Wizard of the Kremlin” is not only useful but also needs to be “told in a mirror when it comes to America.”

“This movie is about a certain place, but it affects all of us around the world.” It’s important to note that Russian history is different from American history. We have had urges toward fascism, dictatorship, and many other bad things. But we’ve also had the idea that we could be better since the beginning, even when we were with the original sins and were gross. Wright talked about the idea that we could strive for some kind of ideal perfection. “We become what we see in the movie if that is lost the way it is now.”