If Oliver Stone didn’t regret his Putin interviews before – he will now
“I just played ice hockey… and [yet] you’re the one who is tired!” jokes Russian President Vladimir Putin to a sleepy Oliver Stone. “Your muscles must hurt,” the soft-spoken filmmaker replies, flashing a toothy smile. It is episode three of the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s fawning four-part documentary series, The Putin Interviews, and I feel like I’m caught in the middle of a blossoming bromance.
Released on June 12, 2017, while the United States was still digesting the idea of a Trump presidency, The Putin Interviews were marketed by major network Showtime as an “unprecedented event”. With its All The Presidents Men-style typeface and snappy trailer that hinted at Frost vs. Nixon-style revelations, there was hope an Oscar-winning Stone might just make Putin sweat a little, especially around corrosive issues like rebuilding the Soviet Union (and what this might mean for Russia’s neighbours) or hacking a US election.
With 20 hours of footage that stretched from 2015 to 2017, there had to be something meaty in there, surely? This wasn’t the first time Stone had interviewed a divisive political figure. However, just like previous Oliver Stone interviews with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, the narrative of The Putin Interviews is more preoccupied with making a warm, fuzzy human being out of a dictator than pressing them on their indiscretions.
There is one particular scene that feels like a teenage fanboy getting the chance to meet their favourite pop star. “Do you ever have a bad day?” Stone wonders, open-eyed and dizzy with optimism. “I’m not a woman, so I don’t have a bad day. That’s just the nature of things,” answers Putin while walking through the golden corridors of the Kremlin. Of course, this casual male chauvinism is passed off by Putin with a shrug of the shoulder.
Each subsequent episode feels like sitting through a live reading of a LinkedIn page, as Putin lists inflated achievement-after-inflated-achievement and voices audacious conspiracy theories (including America being the primary investor in Middle Eastern Terrorist groups) that are greeted by Stone like absolute truths. In an interview with Stephen Colbert to promote this Showtime series, Stone argued his extremely laid-back approach to dealing with Putin was based on the idea that “you don’t make butter with vinegar”. As the studio audience laughs hysterically at Colbert’s joke that Stone’s puppy was probably being held hostage by the Russians off camera, the JFK director looks like he wants the ground to swallow him up.
Nearly five years on from its release, and amid Russia launching a widely condemned invasion of Ukraine, The Putin Interviews look even more embarrassing for the legacy of Oliver Stone. From the very first frame of this documentary, the film comes across as if it were commissioned by a Putin apologist, with a carefully selected Trump voiceover exusing his Russian counterpart’s murderous streak. The suggestion that Putin is misunderstood, and America has been the real aggressor all along, is delivered so bluntly it feels like you’ve just been slapped in the face by a KGB agent during a 3AM interrogation.
Like a Wikipedia page that has edited out all the bad bits, Putin talks gloriously about the old Soviet Union, his days as a spy, and even the war in Crimea. He is framed as a working class folklore hero. “America prevents positive rapprochement between Ukraine and Russia,” says Putin. Stone doesn’t disagree. The memory of Ukraine signing the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement with the EU in 2014 leaves Putin looking disgusted, as he complains about imports coming through “Russian territory”. Perhaps a director less concerned with hagiography might have pushed Putin a little harder on these viewpoints, but Stone just nods along like the Churchill dog.
In the third episode, Putin once again blames America for the Ukrainians seeing Russia as the enemy. “There is no threat from Russia!” he says matter-of-factly about the two countries’ future relations. “Some mistakes were made,” Putin offers of his ally Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria. Stone looks completely satisfied with these answers, perhaps still high off an early sequence where Putin showed he had recently purchased one of the documentarian’s books.
Given everything that has transpired during Putin’s bloody Ukraine invasion, these moments of silence feel particularly uncomfortable when watched in 2022. Stone uses stock footage of late Senator John McCain calling Putin a “KGB colonel and butcher”, but he is confronting the Russian leader with other men’s words and it feels like an obvious aversion tactic. You are left with the nagging feeling that you’re not witnessing a balanced political interview, but Stone trying to make besties with a de facto dictator.
Perhaps the most bizarre moment – well, aside from Stone forcing an unimpressed Putin (“It’s make-believe!”) to sit through Kubrick’s classic nuclear war satire Dr. Strangelove – is when Stone asks Putin about his grandchildren. “Do you play with them in the garden?” Stone beams, likely conjuring up images of Brando’s Don Corleone stumbling around an orange tree chasing a terrified toddler. “Very seldom,” says the Russian leader, revealing he gets in at 1.30AM and wakes up at 7AM.
Suddenly, poignant violin music rises into focus and a stock image of Putin riding a horse appears in the centre of the screen. It feels like pure propaganda designed to celebrate a tireless, sympathetic leader who is “too busy” to play with the kids. Goebbels would have been proud.
To be fair to Stone, he does start to find his teeth a little by the fourth episode. The idea of Russian interference in America election is covered, with Putin looking a little twitchy before reverting to his usual company line of “It was America, it wasn’t me.” As Putin repeatedly talks about reinforcing Russia’s strength in the face of NATO aggression, Stone boldly proclaims: “But, those who abuse power always say it is a matter of survival.”
Yet this rebuke is almost instantly traded for sickly pleasantries. “You’ve done very well by her,” says Stone of Putin’s impact on Russia. The Russian president warns the filmmaker that he will “suffer”, hinting that the Western media won’t be happy Putin has been given such a spotlight, and, without a hint of any edge, Stone replies: “Well, it is worth it if it brings peace and consciousness to the world!”
In the years since The Putin Interviews, Stone has continued his journey as a seemingly non-confrontational political interviewer. In 2021, he released an eight-hour film series about Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Just like his Putin film, it has been attacked by critics for being toothless and basking too much in the glow of an alpha male subject.
Wherever the 75-year-old film veteran’s career goes next (and a Trump interview is surely an inevitability), The Putin Interviews will mark a full circle moment where Stone completed his journey from creating anti-establishment films like Born On The Fourth of July and Wall Street, which smartly stood up to abusers of power, to being someone who appears to indulge those same abusers with endless warmth. “Next time it will be more relaxing!” Stone promises Putin towards the climax of the fourth episode, despite the fact his interviewee has barely broken into a sweat and looks like he’s just finished laying in a hammock. Let’s hope there isn’t a next time.
The Putin Interviews are available to watch on YouTube