Putin is like a Russian James Bond? Vladimir Jude Law’s film seems to have swallowed up the Kremlin myths | film

toLast year, actor Jude Law, speaking at the Venice Film Festival premiere of “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” based on the book about the rise of Vladimir Putin, said he was “not afraid of any repercussions” for his portrayal of the Russian president. The law may be right, but not for the reason it thinks. The film fits closely with the version of the myth promoted by Russian media, which is seen domestically as a compliment rather than an insult.

The Kremlin and Russia’s pop culture machine have long collaborated to craft a personalized version of Putin far removed from the man himself: an ageless political superhero, a perfectly calculated strategist, and a former spy recast as a Russian James Bond who always knows more than he lets on.

A recent example is the TV series “Chronicles of the Russian Revolution,” released in October and directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, a Silver Lion winner and longtime Kremlin supporter. The film’s main character is a fictional, blue-eyed secret service lieutenant colonel, inexplicably chosen by the emperor’s inner circle and presented as the man who “save” Russia from chaos, a role played by Yura Borisov, who was nominated for an Oscar this year. Although the character’s name is Mikhail and not Vladimir, the implication is clear: in this novel, Russia’s savior must be the familiar security officer.

In Russia, the real Putin has long been overshadowed by the artificial Putin. However, Western depictions often end up reinforcing rather than undermining the same narrative. French director Olivier Assayas’s The Wizard of the Kremlin, based on Giuliano da Empoli’s best-selling satirical novel and made into a film by Emmanuel Carrère, seeks in some ways to subvert Putin’s cult. In the film, which will be released in French and Spanish cinemas this month, the Russian president is portrayed not as a cause but as a symptom, and the narrative shifts its center of gravity towards the spinner Vadim Baranov and the political machinery around him.

The film does not present itself as a documentary or a biopic. “What made this film unique, and what ultimately struck me, was that it showed the consequences of political evil, but it also tried to portray its nature. How it works, its inner workings,” Assayas told Variety last year. Some characters appear with their real names, including Putin himself and oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky. Others are fictional but clearly modeled on real characters. Baranov (Paul Dano) appears to be based on political activist Vladislav Surkov. Dmitry Sidorov appears to represent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the businessman who spent 10 years in prison after falling out with Putin.

But the portrayal of Putin resembles the Kremlin’s “A Short Guide to Romanticizing the Leader.” Putin is presented as having been chosen by Berezovsky and Baranov to stabilize the country, because he is “young, athletic, and a spy.” Berezovsky and Baranov visit him in his office and beg him to become president. He replies that he prefers to rule Russia from the shadows, because governments come and go and he seeks permanent power. This is the export myth promoted by the Kremlin: the quiet, hesitant strategist shaped by fate. In fact, none of this happened at all.

In fact, no one ever begged Putin to take this position. In cinematic terms, the presidency was virtually an optional choice, and there was no shortage of candidates. At the heart of this process was Berezovsky, one of the most influential oligarchs of the late Boris Yeltsin era, who was expected to run the country de facto once a successor was installed. The shortlist he considered included Boris Nemtsov (who was killed near the Kremlin in 2015), Sergei Kiriyenko (now first deputy chief of staff), former Security Service director Sergei Stepashin and several others.

Journalist Roman Badanin, who has spent his career studying Putin’s biography and recently published the book The Tsar Himself, claims that Putin simply fits the criteria Berezovsky was looking for. “Berezovsky was a political animal and wanted someone the public understood, preferably from the security services,” Badanin told me. “The key here is that the candidate couldn’t be a communist, because he was at war with them at the time, and he couldn’t be a liberal either – the kind of guy with glasses and a good suit, who irritates voters and seems too pro-Western. This ruled out half the contenders, but Putin was perfect: a loyal state servant.”

Real estate developer Shalva Chigirinsky, a close friend of Berezovsky and a witness to Putin’s selection as his successor, also believes that Putin was not chosen because of his leadership qualities.

“In the summer of 1999, Boria [Berezovsky] “They told me they had settled on Putin,” says Chigirinsky. “I said, ‘Are you out of your mind?’” “And who would he vote for? He couldn’t even choose a shirt of his size or tie a tie,” says Chigirinsky. “Putin made no impression as a leader; he had no political charisma and ambitions. They did not need a strong candidate, Borya explained, but someone who could be controlled, someone who would follow instructions. The main criterion was that the future president should be manageable and loyal, so as not to turn against the “family.”

The family appeared in 1995 and included Berezovsky, Yeltsin’s wife Naina, his daughter Tatyana and her husband Valentin Yumasheva, politician Alexander Voloshin and others. Their priority was to preserve themselves. Russian political history is full of their ancestors being marginalized or destroyed, and Chigirinsky said Putin personally assured them that he would protect their interests.

Both Badanin and Chigirinsky agree that the image of Putin as a powerful KGB spy was built retrospectively and has no relation to reality. Even allegations regarding his “recruitment work” during his KGB years in Dresden from 1985 to 1990 do not stand up to scrutiny; Most of these stories were added later as part of the broader mythology around him. As Badanen put it: “He handled paperwork and technical tasks, not operations. In essence, he was a low-level clerk who had spent 10 years in the internal intelligence system, not someone involved in actual agent work.”

In a strange mixture of fact and fiction, the shift towards accusing Putin of being a “spy” may have been due in part to the arrival of Daniel Craig in the role of James Bond. His tougher, more simplistic interpretation of 007 has prompted Russian media and online audiences to draw visual parallels with Putin. By 2011, glazed posters replacing Craig’s face with Putin’s appeared in artwork at Casino Royale on the central streets of Moscow. The origin of these images was never officially established, and they were removed relatively quickly by municipal services, but the images were widely photographed and picked up by international tabloids, fueling a growing tendency to portray Putin as Russian agent 007.

But if the similarities between Putin and Craig have always been somewhat fabricated, the situation is different with Law, an actor who has been popular with Russian audiences across generations. The Kremlin will not miss the opportunity to portray its selection as a simple diplomatic victory, just as it once portrayed the proposed invitation for Putin to meet Donald Trump in Alaska. The fact that the film doesn’t feature any of the mass or opposition protests or Alexei Navalny, despite covering events up to 2019, is a nice bonus to the publicity.

In Russian cinema and television, Putin is portrayed as an omnipotent figure who never appears on screen. Instead, its presence is indicated by photographs in the offices of governors and ministers or by calls “from above”. Now, in Assayas’ film, he finally has a face.