Film Festival: Monster on the screen – and in reality?

He wears a blonde toupet, deep side parting and a fossilized facial expression when he says: “The Russian president cannot and may not submit to anyone.” Jude Law can be seen as Vladimir Putin in the new film “The Wizard of the Kremlin”. And portrays the president in pictures that may be familiar with some of reality: opaque, expressionless, cold.

Jude Law is just an example of the figures that are conquering the cinema. They are men who abuse their power and appear to some megalomaniac, even monstrous. You determine our political events and you also determine which films are running at the Festival in Venice this year. In addition to the Putin film by Frenchman Olivier Assayas, this are Guillermo del Toros “Frankenstein” and Giorgos Lanthimos’ new film with Emma Stone, “Bugonia”.

Jude Law as an opaque Putin mask

In his novel film “The Wizard of the Kremlin”, Assayas illuminates Putin’s rise to the Russian president. The result is a detailed analysis of how power is currently organized in Russia – from a western and naturally fictionalized look. Interest in the character Putin is only to a limited extent, the president remains mask -like. Instead, it is told from the perspective of the fictional consultant Wadim Baranow, who is modeled on Putin’s former chief advisor Vladislaw Surkow.

Due to the chaotic post -Soviet years, Paul Dano moves in the figure of the consultant to Putin’s innermost circling of power. The thriller is based on a book by Giuliano da Empoli written in front of the Ukraine decline. Like the novel, the film tells of a ruler who ultimately defines itself through the war. Putin is consistently referred to as Tsar, a politician who continues the imperialist tradition of Russia.

Guillermo del Toro: “Frankenstein” fits in our time

“The Wizard of the Kremlin” is a warning of human arrogance – as well as the competition films “Frankenstein” and “Bugonia”. Mary Shelley’s famous horror novel about a creature created by humans that brutally intervenes into the life of her creator shows how dangerous it can be when people try to stand above everything.

Hollywood star Oscar Isaac embodies Victor Frankenstein as such a charismatic and arrogant string puller, a kind of misleading rock star. “He has the desire to advance to something greater and cannot accept that things are as they are,” Isaac described the figure in the interview of the dpa.

The three-time Oscar winner del Toro had long planned a film adaptation of the novel. But that the blockbuster is only now coming out, the Mexican said in an interview: “A film in which it says:” Only playing monster ” – it couldn’t be more apt at the moment.”

Emma Stone is terrorized by insane men

Jesse Plemons in “Bugonia”, one of the early Venice favorites of this year’s competition, also acts completely megalomaniac. The Goldene Löwen winner Lanthimos tells of two conspiracy ideologists (Ua Plemons) who kidnap a company boss (Emma Stone). They believe that they are not a person, but an alien that terrorizes the earth.

In a brutal way, the two men try to force the woman to make contact with her “mother ship” and the alien strippers and get lost in the most absurd beliefs. “Not much about this dystopia is fictional,” said Lanthimos. “Most of it is a reflection of our actual world.”

As usual with Lanthimos, the film is grotesque, brutal, funny. Without revealing too much, he finally comes to a similar punch line like “Frankenstein”: the most outrageous in our lives are not any strength, but what is most familiar to us: man himself.

How does Christoph Waltz stay hopeful in monstrous times?

The cinema is currently holding a mirror to the world – with a shattering finding about our reality. The question remains: and what now? Journalists, the fictional KGB officer Putin in the film explains, are basically like spies: they collect information and present them to the public

And this is free to deal with it. It makes sense to ask the Hollywood stars present in Venice for solutions. Del Toro, undoubtedly a romantic, says: “We live in a time of terror and intimidation. And the answer to which art also includes is love.” Others are more cynic. Question to Oscar winner Christoph Waltz, who embodies an arms dealer in “Frankenstein”: How do you stay hopeful in these monstrous times? His answer: “I don’t.”