It’s such an astonishing story that you wouldn’t dare make it up. And yet someone already had, which is part of what makes the story so astonishing. From 2015 to 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a popular comic film and TV actor, starred in Servant of the People – a political satire about an ordinary man suddenly made president of Ukraine who gradually proves himself to be the incorruptible leader the country needed. In 2019, Zelenskiy began serving as president in real life; barely three years after that, he found himself president in a time of war, when Vladimir Putin did what he had long wanted to do and invaded the country.
The Zelensky Story, directed by Michael Waldman, is told in three hour-long parts filmed over several trips to Ukraine. It comprises interviews with Zelenskiy, his wife, Olena, and friends and colleagues, mixed with footage of his entertainment career and his life as a statesman, diplomat and war leader. The first episode covers Zelenskiy’s rise to fame; the second his move into politics and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine; and the third his experience as the head of a country convulsed by conflict.
In the background, always, is Putin’s career and – not inadvertently – the difference between the two men. It is fascinating to watch – and impossible to put into words. Only film can capture the blank-eyed soullessness of the Russian president and the ineffable sense of wrongness he carries with him – even if you knew nothing of him or his history; only film can capture the warmth, charm and humanity radiating from his Ukrainian counterpart, brimful of soul. By the end of the three episodes, it is hard not to let their intertwined fates take on mythic proportions: good versus evil, darkness versus light, Zelenskiy’s love for his country and his people versus Putin’s hate for anything but power.
In the first episode, we see Zelenskiy in happier times, with his friends and fellow players in a comedy troupe that moved swiftly up the ranks of Ukraine’s televised comedy competition, KVN, leading to tours of Moscow and various former Soviet countries, gaining fans everywhere. He started his own production company, starred in successful films and, in what feels in this film like his last moment of peace, voiced the part of Paddington in the Ukrainian versions of the films.
Everyone interviewed who knew him at the time is clear that he was extremely talented but also extremely competitive and endlessly driven. This appetite for ever greater challenges led him to make the fateful move into politics, although he was clearly motivated by the need to purge Ukraine’s political system of its corruption and its ties to Putin. But he blindsided his wife with his announcement on the 2018 New Year’s Eve edition of KVN that he would be running for president. She found out at the same time as the rest of the country, through the TV screen – a supreme example of the principle that it is easier to apologise afterwards than ask for permission first. It is clear from Olena’s expressions then (on camera, listening to his inaugural speech) and now that, even without the invasion, this is not the life she would have chosen.
Whatever we make of this move, it is hard to watch the next few years of Zelenskiy’s life unfold without coming to the conclusion that you are watching the evolution of a hero: clear-sighted, intelligent, a master of the media – vital today – and a true believer in a cause greater than himself. The famous video of him and his parliament assuring Ukrainians that they were staying in Kyiv as the Russians advanced, filmed on his phone and sent directly into the world, will remain for ever remarkable. That he had the savvy to retain scriptwriters from his Servant of the People days to write his speeches, and to design them to move electorates when it became clear that world leaders were reluctant to help without pressure, is another kind of marvel.
Waldman has put together a detailed portrait of an extraordinary man at an extraordinary time in his country’s history (and that of the world, if you think what a Putin victory would mean for western democracy), while unobtrusively filling in any gaps in geopolitical knowledge a viewer might have. This is a gift of a subject, but Waldman manages to sidestep hagiography while still acknowledging the astonishing nature of the man and his time. Zelenskiy is a study in how passion paired with performance skills is one of the greatest advantages a modern leader can have. Whether it is enough to drive back the Russian army we will have to wait and see.
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