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I Do Not Think Vladimir Vladimirovich Will Enjoy this Film [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-12-10  

While readers of this site and students of Russian politics may know a great deal about Vladimir Putin, I doubt the average media consumer is all that familiar with the details of the Russian dictator’s life and career, so I’m always interested to see efforts to use popular culture to better educate the world on this menace of a man.

One such project, the collaboration by Andrew Weiss and Brian “Box” Brown, “Accidental Czar,” uses the graphic novel form to educate readers on the Russian president. What “Maus” did for Holocaust education, Weiss and Brown achieved for Putin-era Kremlinology.

Now, it’s time to see how cinema can broaden the public’s understanding of this evil and banal man.

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When the trailer first appeared on YouTube last month, thousands of Russian-speaking commenters piped up, claiming the film wasn’t real.

They were wrong. The movie, “Putin,” is the first international release by AIO Entertainment, the production company of Patryk Vega, now known as Besaleel, the Warsaw-born filmmaker best known for films about corrupt cops and Russian mob bosses.

That background served him well in building this “artistic protest” against the dictator.

Pitched as a political thriller and psychological portrait of Russian president Vladimir Putin, the film, judging by the trailer, is unlikely to have many fans in Moscow. Besaleel, who says he conceived the project as an artistic protest against the “Russian dictator and the war in Ukraine,” shows Putin alternatively a doddering old man shivering in soiled diapers, as a gangster-style mob boss blackmailing his predecessor Boris Yeltsin and as a cold-hearted killer ordering bombings and assassinations. The director recreates several real-life events, including the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis, in which Russian security forces pumped toxic gas into the crowded Dubrovka Theater to rescue hostages from Chechen terrorists, an action that resulted in the death of up to 130 hostages. The carpet bombing of Chechnya under Putin’s watch, a military move many say anticipated Russia’s approach in the Ukraine war, is also highlighted.

I know nothing about the film other than the trailer and what has been reported by VOA and Hollywood Reporter above, but, judging by the trailer, I really don’t think Vladimir Vladimirovich will be rating this up.

Warning: the trailer’s got some gross bits.

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