The film-maker is taking heat for snuggling up to the Russian president in his new documentary. In fact, he got unique access to Vladimir Putin’s jet, dacha, ice-hockey rink – and violent homophobic humour

In Vladimir Putin’s private chapel, lined with gold and icons, Oliver Stone is surprised by the lack of chairs. Through the interpreter who is always as close to one shoulder as a bodyguard is to the other, the Russian President explains that “Orthodox mass is served standing up”. The director asks whether worshippers ever kneel and is told that, yes, genuflection is permitted.



The scene is a perfect metaphor for the controversy over The Putin Interviews, Stone’s four-part series, constructed from multiple conversations with the Russian leader between 2015 and 2017. Critics feel that Stone is kneeling at the shrine of an anti-humanitarian tyrant; admirers will thank a film-maker able to show us Putin’s altar, as well as his presidential jet, dacha, gym, ice-hockey rink and the Kremlin situation room.

In the most intimate sequence, which resembles what Carpool Karaoke might be like if it were sponsored by The Economist, Putin himself drives Stone from Moscow to the official presidential residence in the country, with an interpreter crouched in the back.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Is Oliver Stone kneeling at the shrine of an anti-humanitarian tyrant? … The Putin Interviews. Photograph: Komandir/Courtesy of Showtime

It is often said that the most vital aspect of documentary-making is access and, by that measure, Stone’s project is a triumph. But, in a political film, stance also matters, and that is where Stone’s many detractors will attack.

The director has always specialised in presidents: a fictional trilogy about US commanders-in-chief – JFK, Nixon, W – and documentaries such as Commandante and Castro in Winter, portraits of the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and South of the Border, in which Stone met seven South American interviewees including President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

This established Stone as a leftist, and his meetings with Castro and Chávez were, frankly, fanchats, which have understandably raised suspicion about the appearance of Putin in his autograph book. But the Russian interviews are far from the advocacy narratives Stone has made before.

Oliver Stone on Vladimir Putin: ‘The Russian people have never been better off’ Read more

The most obvious comparison is with the interviews between Richard Nixon and David Frost in 1977, though Putin is not yet a disgraced former president and where Frost was smoothly suited and spoken, Stone is often shambolic in both dress and address. In one chat, he seems to be fighting to stay awake, complaining to Putin about his jet lag.

But while Frost, at the time of his Nixon project, was considered a lightweight entertainer unsuited to a crucial political interview, he did eventually get what he needed on Watergate. Stone comes through, too, in the end.

It’s true that many of his questions would fail an audition for the Spanish Inquisition. Examples: “You’re credited with doing many fine things in your first term – you’re a real son of Russia.” And: “Do you like your grandchildren?” Stone also steers the agenda to his personal concerns, such as state surveillance, the subject of his latest movie, Snowden. (Putin is even shown two clips from it on a laptop.)

But, especially in the later episodes, the director presses hard on issues including allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US election, Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea, Syria, rumours that Putin has zillions of roubles in secret Cypriot bank accounts, and the fear that his leadership – which could stretch to 24 years if he wins another presidential term next year – risks becoming a dictatorship cosmetically disguised by democratic process.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Stone’s questions do come up with the goods – by the end. Photograph: Komandir/Courtesy of Showtime

Generally receiving variations of nyet in reply, Stone rarely follows up. But he is wily enough to hold back his heaviest material for the end, in the encounters recorded this year, in which he twice wins the interviewer’s medal of honour, when Putin appears to call a halt before the end of the allotted slot. And, throughout the films, Stone leaves in telling pauses and sideways glances that invite the viewer to judge when the politician is uneasy or dissembling.

Although Putin comes across as highly intelligent (“Those were not Gorbachev’s ideas. The idea of utopia was put forward by the French Socialists”) and well-briefed (able to recite the budgets of most global economies), Stone can hardly be accused of having manufactured those qualities, and viewers will have a good sense of the areas (especially Crimea and cyber-crime) where the interviewee seems to say less than he could.

Stone leaves in small but telling details, too, such as a few moments of Putin speaking English between shoots – “Coffee, Sir? Sugar?,” he asks, becoming Stone’s waiter – and Stone wondering whether a call on the Washington-Moscow hotline is conducted on first-name terms: “Yes. It’s ‘Barack’ and ‘Vladimir’.”

Sense of humour is also a reliable indicator of personality. Although Putin shows more bemusement than amusement in the most peculiar scene – when Stone makes him watch the Cold War satire Dr Strangelove – the politician does, over the four hours, crack six jokes.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I prefer not to go in the shower with him. Why provoke him?’ … Putin cracks a gag about washing with a gay submariner. Photograph: Komandir/Courtesy of Showtime

Three of these intriguingly reveal an old KGB man’s obsession with the CIA (“No, that wouldn’t be CIA – too subtle for them!”) and the others slipperiness, sexism and homophobia. Despite insisting that Russia is a great place for men who love men, the president gives the game away when Stone cannily asks if a gay submariner could shower with his crew-mates. “Well,” Putin smirks. “I prefer not to go in the shower with him. Why provoke him?” Making the contempt violent, Putin adds that he is brutal at judo.

Stone’s work always shows disdain for A-B-C storytelling. Here, he cuts between answers on the same subject two years apart, and sometimes picks up in a later episode a strand from earlier on. So, if viewers lament his failure to raise a question about the Ukraine or surveillance in parts two or three, it’s quite possible he will ask it in the fourth.

An oddity of modern US politics is that concern about sympathy towards Russia – a right-wing obsession in the loyalty trials conducted by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s – has now become a feature of the liberal left. There are understandable reasons for this shift: Russia has become the greatest vulnerability of liberal hate-figure President Trump and the Putin regime has a wretched record on human rights. It does seem bizarre, though, that Stone and Trump – men whose politics overlap only in a liking for conspiracy theories – should simultaneously be under suspicion for snuggling up to Russia.

With The Putin Interviews, Stone has done a great service to democracy. If the first two episodes are won, in boxing terms, by the interviewee, fair referees would call the the third a draw and the fourth, if not a knockout, a victory for Stone in terms of undefended punches. For students of politics, there is almost as much gold in these programmes as in Putin’s chapel.

The Putin Interviews is on Sky Atlantic every night for four nights from Tuesday at 2am. In the US, it continues on Showtime at 9pm.