Tyrants do not usually shine by self -criticism. Pol Pot, Rafael Trujillo or Benito Mussolini only conceived a place for discrepancy: underground. Hardly Vladimir Putin was today Sunday in the projection of The Kremlin wizard, De Olivier Assayas, in the Venice Festival contest. His past as a spy invites not to rule out a camouflage, although the Russian leader has more important issues to attend. Or ignore, like. In any case, what was seen on the screen would have outraged him. Or maybe not. Because the film aims to tell the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the new tsar. And because, according to the film, extreme passions are not theirs. Rather, take note, calculate, and only then execute. A cold president, for an ice movie. Ambitious, cold, hard. And that is why stimulating, although also tiring. Like the shadows of the power it narrates.
A message warns at the beginning of the footage: the script ―co -written by Emmanuel Carrère, which also offers a cameo – is based on the homonymous book of Giuliano da Empoli (Seix Barral) and what will be seen below is a fiction work. Then the film starts, and the first name is pronounced is “Vladimir Vladimirovič Putin.” Maybe everything is invented, but you have to see how real it seems. As if it were. Vadim Baranov also exists. And he has been the counselor closer to the despot for years. Through his gaze – Paul Dano embodies – the film follows the recent story of Russia, its fall in disgrace, how capitalism sneaked through the steel curtain, the resurrected thirst for greatness and imperialism. A very current story, whose consequences continue. There are oligarchs, manipulations, propaganda, corruption, death, great ideas and no scrup. With a strength: the film is not soaked with blood and vodka, but of words. Politics. Narrated by who conceived it. The modern scraping. The Kremlin wizard.
Just the opposite, somehow, to the other length in contest of the day: Father Mother Sister Brother, of Jim Jarmusch. Here the dialogues are missing. Or almost. And it is also a virtue: their silences say everything. The filmmaker proposes a new film for episodes. And the nth sensational cast: Cate Blanchett, Charlotte Rampling,, Adam Driver. Jarmusch focuses on a triptych on the family: two children visit their father; Two others have tea with their mother; Two twins come together when the parents are gone. The best known, but also strange universe: intimid ties that no one has chosen. And that the director analyzes his usual humanity. “In his films there are no protagonists, or antagonists. Only people,” said India Moore, another of the interpreters. And half a press conference served to question themselves about how the filmmaker makes his delights. Here is the last.
It happens in the best houses, as in Father Mother Sister Brother: The desire to meet soon becomes a desire to escape; Adult children beg approval as children, and as such they are treated. Sometimes there are no need or conversations, because it is enough to be; Or maybe nobody speaks because there is nothing to say. It is called love, although sometimes it does not seem like it. Between both films, anyway, the Mostra left the rooms with a treasure: material to keep talking.
The protagonists also joined the talk. The first question that perhaps summarizes the power that Putin has accumulated: “Do you fear?” Tsar’s revenge has shown to have very long hands, but the actor declared himself calm. And he stressed that he knew that “the story would be told intelligently, with nuances.” Assayas added that in Russia at the end of the nineties an alliance was settled among those who bet on violence, brutality, and a kind of postmodern theater, such as the one that Baranov manages. Now it is all over the world. It is a situation that is scary and the most terrifying thing is that we have not yet found answers. ”A possible antidote perhaps resides in complexity. Or, at least, it is the recipe that chooses The Kremlin Wizard. The issues that it deals, after all, as a single they have nothing.
When the journalist who speaks with Baranov in the film poses an objection, the other always has an answer, or an alternative version. , the same with which he deceives any interlocutor. The reporter accuses him of having rigged the elections in Ukraine years ago, the counselor asks if those of the Irak occupied by the US were much more regular. “In Russia the money does not send, but the closeness to power,” he clarifies to his interviewer.
Baranov moves at will the pieces of the board, encourages oppositions that he then leaves in the stake – or in the gutter – uses and throws according to his convenience. Giuliano da Empoli swore that Assayas was the only director to whom he sent his book. Because he loves him, although he also influenced that they are neighbors. And Dano, in turn, celebrated the writer: “It was an incredible script in terms of language. He had more than a theatrical work than most movies. The magician is between racks, preparing his spells, and in my voice there should be some of that.” The commitment to the lip and tone without emotion of the protagonist is a success. Another thing, however, is that it can work for two and a half hours. Almost all sequences consist of Baranov holding relevant conversations with people. The formula, little by little, is running out. The spectator a little too.
For Baranov, on the other hand, losing lucidity was not allowed. It is enough for a moment, for example, to decipher Putin. In the film, when the presidency offers him, the KGB official bothers. Not for the proposal, but for treating you. They were looking for the future puppet to handle. It was made, however, with all threads. “Olivier told me that I should think about recreating oneself after great humiliation,” Law described. These days Putin until he intensifies and the rest of Ukraine, after three years of invasion. Meanwhile, he will sit down to discuss a possible peace with him. And even the ultimatum of the White House is allowed. It will also unite them ranting against the cinema: the US president was evil The apprenticeby Ali Abbasi. When Law was asked to cite something good that he had taken out of being Putin, he spent a while in silence: “Ahem … I learned judo.”
From Jarmusch, the other way around, his cast only had precious words. Blanchett said his works have a “particular soul.” Rampling celebrated his “extraordinary generosity of spirit, with which he somehow converts the actors also into directors, to make the film with him.” The director himself tried to clarify his way of creating: he said that there are ideas that pursue him for one year, or more, until he starts writing and everything goes to the race. “The best dialogues come out when I literally transcribe what the characters are saying in my head,” he said. Thus, in just three weeks, the script of Father Mother Sister Brother. He said that the filming left him exhausted, that it is much more difficult to be “very aware of a gesture to film 100 zombies.” The film, finally, came out “very close” to what Jarmusch had imagined. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad,” he joked. The first, without a doubt, although something below pearls like Paterson, Mistery Train o One night on earth, with the Share dialogues in cars and in different cities. The problem is the bar that imposes its filmography.
In the conversation. MUBI, one of the distributors of the film, is being highly criticized for accepting investments of a company that also allocates money to a start-up Israeli specialized in defense technologies. What does Jarmusch think? “I talked to them, our relationship began much earlier, but I am disappointed, and worried. At the same time, I am an independent director, I consider that the money that comes from large companies is dirty. If we analyzed the accounts of any of them, we would find many dark things.” It was evident below. Moore asked with some prudence if he could join the answer. Then, he released. He said a somewhat taboo word in these days of Festival: “Genocide” of Palestinians, which brought him applause. And, at the end of a long argument, he concluded: “I hope that little by little people who are doing things wrong to work with others who know it.” Jarmusch, before answering the next question, wanted to thank him. His cinema is very human. How was he not going to be.
