A look behind the Kremlin's walls

It's easy to see why director Olivier Assayas may have been drawn to Giuliano Da Empoli's novel about the machinations behind Vladimir Putin's rise to power in post-Soviet Russia. We seem to relish behind-the-scenes looks at powerful institutions, perhaps hoping that we'll enjoy the contradictory pleasures of savoring and condemning the rot we find. Employing a strong cast led by Paul Dano, as Vadim Baranov, a master manipulator who becomes a backstage force in Putin's career, Assayas presents a highlight reel of Russian history from the 1980s to the invasion of Crimea. Assayas unifies the movie's various segments with a narration by Baranov, who meets at his country home with a visiting Yale professor (a wasted Jeffrey Wright) to whom he tells his story, a framing device that weighs the movie down. Shifting focus and locations, Assayas introduces various important characters in the story, notably Boris Berezovsky (Will Keen), an oligarch who identifies Putin as a successor to the…