Jude Law portrays Vladimir Putin in Olivier Assayas's political drama The Wizard of the Kremlin and accepted the role without fear of repercussions, trusting the director and script to handle the material with nuance. The film adapts Giuliano da Empoli's novel and centers on Vadim Baranov, a spin doctor who facilitates Putin's rise in the 1990s, inspired by Vladislav Surkov. Paul Dano plays Baranov and emphasizes exploring the character's point of view rather than simplifying him as merely bad. Law grappled with representing a leader whose public face reveals very little behind a mask.
I felt confident, in the hands of Olivier [the director] and the script, that this story was going to be told intelligently and with nuance and consideration. We weren't looking for controversy for controversy's sake. It's a character within a much broader story. We weren't trying to define anything about anyone.
I don't think you have to look for a positive, but I do think you have to be willing to discover the point of view of the character. If you were to just label a character like Baranov as bad, it would be a massive oversimplification, which does more harm than good.
The tricky side to me was that the public face we see gives very, very little away. There has been a term for him and that is the man without a face'. There's a mask. Understandably, Olivier would want me to portray this or that in a scene with a certain emotion, and I felt the conflict of trying to show very little.
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