But if you've ever seen Winslet on Ricky Gervais' show, “Extra,” you know that Winslet happens to have a hilarious personality. Like me, she may have wondered when she would let out that funny side of her.
Enter “The Regime,” HBO's six-episode miniseries about the troublesome dictator of a crumbling central European nation rich in cobalt and sugar beet. Winslet's comedic talents are on display for the first time in a while.
In the series, Winslet is portrayed as Chancellor Elena Varnum. Elena Burnham is a charismatic agitator who is too busy fighting a largely manufactured disease to address her (fictional) country's economic woes. Almost confined to the palace, she is cared for by her obedient husband, Nicky (Guillaume Gallienne), and a group of shadowy advisors who timidly indulge her every whim. Driven by her latest paranoia (Elena claims that a mold infestation is destroying her health), she summons Corporal Herbert Zubac (Matthias Schoenaerts), a disgraced soldier, to the palace. , decided to have him serve as the new moisture measurement officer. The occupant of this thankless position should use a hygrometer to: Measure the humidity in every room she enters. Zubac, who recently earned the title “Butcher” for his bloody job slaughtering some miners, clearly suspects he is about to be punished. He is a large, simple man, as the palace caretaker Agnes (Andrea Riseborough) leads him up several grand staircases filled with mold removal workers and explains his new duties as Prime Minister and the risks of getting them wrong. But he looks confused.
Winslet's grasp of the character is immediate, unique, and flawless. The way she walks, the way she talks (out of one corner of her mouth to minimize contamination from other people's air), the way she sings (off-key, proudly). The Prime Minister's first encounter with Zubac also serves as the show's best and most convincing argument for how Elena was able to come to power. She asks what he knows, tells him he is worthy of love, orders him to meet her in her dreams, and asks him what he did there at the next meeting. No-nonsense, eccentric, and convincing, Elena completely captivates Zubac. And his dedication to her health (through fairly primitive home remedies) ultimately makes him her best friend.He overtakes her husband and undermines her classism, but is otherwise unremarkable There are advisors (including Pippa Heywood, but he should have gone for something meatier) trying to convince Elena to pivot to populist policies.
Winslet and Schoenaerts' chemistry escalates into codependent madness, until the show – at least for this viewer – becomes a little too dark and consequential to sustain the comedy it truly excels at. , things unfold and unfold interestingly enough.
“The Regime” boasts an impressive pedigree. Creator and showrunner Will Tracy is a former editor-in-chief of “The Onion,” created “The Menu” and worked on “Succession.” Directors Jessica Hobbs (who directed an episode of “The Crown”) and Stephen Frears (who directed the 2006 film “The Queen” and the 2017 historical drama “Victoria and Abdul”) are both female-governed has shown a long-standing interest in
“The Regime” feels like a collective (and sneaky) over-correction of much of this earlier work. Winslet, for example, has played smart, troubled, traumatized women, many of them American, with very idiosyncratic dialects and accents, which she masters. Here she plays the emotionally charged role of an unstable, amoral, unbridled, and unfettered agitator, as she strived to portray. A made-up accent and a slight lisp.
As for Tracy, in addition to working on “Succession,” which borrows heavily from real-life situations (based on the Murdoch family); Worked on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” a research-intensive program that focuses on real-world details. In “The Regime” there is a sense of a creative spirit that rebels against the limitations that particular referents (or reality principles) may impose. Tracy, whose hobby is studying dictators, intentionally removed anything in the series that could be construed as analogous to real-world events. We also see a desire to turn up the volume on the absurd aspects of kleptocracy. all “Boar on the Floor” – The infamous overblown “Succession” scene where the head of the family forces his minions to crawl on the floor and eat them to prove their loyalty.
Hobbs, and especially Frears, have spent countless hours telling stories of modest, pathetically respectable English queens who operate within strict, sometimes punitive constraints, and rule recklessly. There may be some joy in being able to supervise a sexually voracious female ruler from Ido.
While understandable impulses, they can also be reactive rather than generative, producing something that may be more fun to make than to look at.
That said, the absurdity and excesses of dictatorships are a rich subject. So too is the slow abdication of dictators (usually men) as they become soft, needy, and moody in their bubbles. There is paranoia to consider. Strange and embarrassing iconography (Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un sitting on horses). Co-dependence with various yes-men and resentment towards them. It's really interesting to think what a female version of this would look like. “The Regime” suggests that she may have a small obsession with how often her name appears in American headlines. She may order the preservation of her father's corpse and periodically conduct hostile interviews with him (and she may throw a tantrum if he shows signs of decomposition). ). That she might steal the consigliere's child, imprison her predecessor (Hugh Grant!), indulge in a Rasputin imitation, and that she might use the language of maternal seduction in a televised speech. She wears a tight-fitting dress with a military collar, sings off-key, and may eat dirt if conditions are right.
These are strange and fascinating details. But when you add them up, they don't add up to something like this: Political This narrative makes the new critique too broad and falls into tautology. (A selfish leader is selfish. A dictator? Domineering!) Other than Elena's interactions with Chinese and Americans, there is no real explanation of how she rules, especially about her (admittedly nightmarish and at least semi-competent) an enforcement system outside the palace. There is also no clear recognition of the opposition. Or of people.
In other words, as an ideological explanation, The series ends up being held back rather than strengthened by its fictional aspects. That doesn't seem to be what Tracy wants. “Although this is a fictional country, it feels as if it is taking place within the geopolitical reality that we recognize, and how foreign policy works and how these regimes thrive. “I hope it feels like it says something about how it's run,” he recently told The Hollywood Reporter. He also described The Regime as a satire, a fairy tale, and a love story. At least in this show, these are not compatible modes.
The unwavering commitment to non-specificity, combined with the absurdist excess that makes The Regime interesting, creates a series that is carefully crafted to say nothing in particular, and feels more like a catharsis than a stand-alone story. It feels like a practice. Or like someone telling me about their dreams. You can agree— Yes, that person you created who did crazy things certainly seems like a handful! And certainly, as a comedy, “The Regime” has a lot to offer. But satire is fundamentally a parasitic medium. More or less targets are required. There is a danger that “The Regime'' (like Elena Burnham) may become too eager to create a spectacle by asserting independence from real-world governments, and end up being fruitless.
System (6 episodes) will premiere on March 3 on HBO.