By Fiorela Gonzales

The Wizard of the Kremlin is a French film based on an Italian novel of the same name, that chronicles the rise of Vladimir Putin with the help of his Rasputin-like advisor, Vadim Baranov, who are played by British and American actors. Though Vladimir Putin is a very real person we are all aware of, Vadim Baranov is, in fact, a fictionalized character. The film lets you know from the beginning, before the credits even start, that though this is based on real events, it is, in fact, fictionalized. It’s just such a shame that they didn’t choose to make the fictionalized parts interesting and somehow made the real-life interesting things that happened boring as well.

Paul Dano, who plays the titular wizard of the film Vadim Baranov, spends the over bloated 136-minute runtime of the movie monologuing a VO in a sleep-inducing monotone that has an undecipherable accent. Is it British? Is it Russian? Who’s to know. The film centers itself around Baranov and his rise from artist and theater director in 1990s Russia to reality TV Executive to government official and Vladimir Putin’s spin doctor. The film is broken up into separate sections, the title sequences of which seem completely out of place and made by iMovie, all centering around Baranov’s rise to government official. The film ends in 2019 with Baranov retired (though not of his own accord) and relaying his past to Rowland (Jeffrey Wright), an author whose purpose for visiting Baranov is not exactly clear. The story is backdropped with real historical footage interspersed throughout the film from important moments of Russia’s history that led to the rise of Vladimir Putin, played here by Jude Law in a befuddlingly British accent.

It’s hard to understand how a movie about a reality TV executive becoming the Rasputin to one of modern history’s most notorious fascist dictators ended up being so dull. There are real moments of historical intrigue happening throughout the film, such as the Kursk submarine disaster, which claimed the lives of 118 crew members. The submarine disaster was a PR nightmare for the newly elected president, Vladimir Putin, and it was due to the highly critical nature of TV channels against his government that spurned Putin’s attack on Russian media and changed the landscape of modern democracy leading to now Russian media being almost entirely under state control. These are real things that happened, and they’re incredibly interesting parts of our modern history, and yet, the movie plays it so dull and boring. It could be the endless monotone VO by Dano that kills its momentum or the fact that British Vladimir Putin never really gets to be unleashed with his minimal screen time.

For a movie about the fall and rise of modern Russia, it really doesn’t give any time to the modern dictator. The movie tries to push for a Vice (2018) understanding of the evil behind the mouthpiece, except Paul Dano’s wizard behind the curtain has undecipherable ambitions. Is it power? Is it TV? Is it the excitement of being the one to pull Putin’s strings? Is it love? It’s unclear what motivates Dano’s character to do what he does, and we never really learn much about it. Somehow, in the end, it does end up being about a middling love story that we never cared much about throughout the film. What’s most absurd, though, is how it doesn’t even touch the political climate of today. This is a very real world we live in today, one in which Putin is still in power, and the mention of the US or any other geopolitical powers are scarce at best.

Ultimately, this ends up being a French movie about Russians with no Russians that is just so absurdly boring. They took real modern history about real murderous fascists and made Paul Dano sleep talk his way through it. You have to sit through 2 hours and 10 minutes of drawling VO for one interesting thing to finally happen in the film in the literal last minute. Baranov may be a fictitious character, but that doesn’t make him an interesting one.

2 ½ stars.