The Wizard of the Kremlin Review: Inside the Political Mind of Russia

Not enough people know who Vladislav Surkov is. If they did, maybe the world wouldn’t be in as horrific a place as it is now.

To be clear, Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano, There Will Be Blood) is not Surkov, even if the man known as the Grey Cardinal of the Kremlin is the clear inspiration for the character whose nickname becomes the title of Olivier Assayas’ new political allegory. The Wizard of the Kremlin is both immersed in the reality of the rise of Vladimir Putin and heavily fictionalized, especially in the character of Baranov. Both he and his real-life inspiration are men of contradictions, pragmatists and intellectuals who flourished under the liberties and cultural revolution of post-Soviet Russia, and yet also were key players in helping install Putin as the new de facto czar. 

The fictionalized version is recounted by Baranov to American academic Rowland (Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction). It’s safe to assume that Rowland has come on to Baranov’s radar for having written an essay titled “Vadim Baranov and the Invention of Fake Democracy,” although Baranov much prefers the term sovereign democracy. Yet Baranov isn’t so obvious as to even hint that Rowland has played on any vanity he might have hidden. Instead, he lures the writer to his dacha in Siberia over their shared love of Yevgeny Zamyatin, author and enemy of Stalin. There, Baranov nominally recounts his life story, from Soviet-era Russia through perestroika, glasnost, the brief rise of democracy in the Motherland, and then the Putin era that he helped shape.

If the average audience member is unaware of the political significance of Zamyatin, in part that’s because it’s not really a concern of Assayas or his co-screenwriter, Emmanuel Carrère. Nor was it of major interest of Italian political fixer turned author Giuliano da Empoli, upon whose novel, Le mage du Kremlin, the script is based. Equally, the film is not really about Baranov or Surkov or even Putin. The goal is to give Western audiences an insight into the modern Russian political mindset, to shift their political perspective to one where the West is the antagonist. Without that, it’s impossible to understand how Putin of all people assembled a power base that stretched from former dissident Leninists to neo-Nazi biker gangs, lifetime bureaucrats to oil-rich oligarchs and media tycoons, and turned them all into fearful, loyal courtiers.

It’s all recounted through Dano’s soft, lightly accented purr as Baranov, who gives weight to details when it matters. A staging of Zamyatin’s We may elicit a nod of recognition from historians of revolutionary politics, but it’s far more relevant for him to explain the symbolism of Mikhail Gorbachev drinking milk at the podium. That’s a moment that speaks to his central thesis about how the real-life Putin came to power, and in that unfolding Baranov becomes an avatar for all the devious advisers who facilitated his ascent. Even the joke-not-a-joke way that those around him call Putin the czar speaks to long-established patterns of power in Russia, and Putin’s position within them.

At the core of Baranov’s own rise and inevitable fall is, of course, Putin. Played with icy perfection by Jude Law, he is revealed as the inevitable result of the last 40 years of global events. Yet Assayas and his actors never portray the wizard of the Kremlin and the former KGB officer turned president of Russia as friends: There is always a sense of each understanding what they can use from each other, and Baranov always knowing that no man can stand next to the czar forever.Assayas has crafted a political drama that has the chilly understatement of a British prestige drama from the 1990s, a 24 Hour Party People for geopolitics wonks. Occasionally, he falls back on obvious narrative conventions, like Alicia Vikander as Ksenia, Baranov’s on-again, off-again but perpetually aloof love who is the only person who really sees him for who he is. But even among all the fictions, audiences will find more truths about modern Russia than they’ll get from most news broadcasts.

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This article appears in May 15 • 2026.