The Regime Review: We Find A Story In Images That Wants To Break The Limits Of The Small Screen
Cast: Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenarts, Andrea Riseborough, Guillaume Gallienne
Created By: Will Tracy
Streaming Platform: Max
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars)
Get ready to laugh and reflect on the craziness of the contemporary world because The Regime series has also arrived in Italy and missing it would be a real shame. One day after the American debut on the HBO channel, it is also possible to see in our country, on HBO Max, the new satirical series created by Will Tracy and directed by Stephen Frears together with Jessica Hobbs starring the Oscar winner Kate Winslet in the role of an eccentric chancellor, Helena Vernham. Highly anticipated title all over the world, The Regime features in the cast, in addition to Kate Winslet, also actors of the caliber of Hugh Grant and Matthias Schoenaerts (Django) and is ready to give the public an incredible experience between madness and reality, irony and depth where it will be impossible not to laugh and reflect on the absurd social and political contradictions of contemporary society.
Do you know the great biographies of women in power that have been so popular both in cinema and on TV in recent decades? Not only The Queen with Helen Mirren, The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep, and the recent cult Netflix series The Crown by Peter Morgan, which is part of this journey of stories for the big and small screen about historical and the same time enigmatic female figures is the ‘exhilarating The Regime. Created, written, and produced by Will Tracy (he had edited the culinary horror The Menu and some episodes of Succession), the miniseries with Kate Winslet is arriving on HBO Max starting from Monday 4 March with the first episode, remaining with a weekly appointment until April. In our review of The Regime, we will tell you in detail about this blatantly satirical television project, which takes advantage of the great television comedy lesson of the award-winning HBO series Veep and which tells of the lights and shadows of the Western political structure of yesterday and today; all through the volatile and unpredictable portrait of Chancellor Elena Vernham, played by Kate Winslet in simply dazzling form.
The Regime Review: The Story Plot
The Regime tells the story of a fictional nation, led by the steady hand of Elena Vernham (Kate Winslet), the chancellor at the heart of executive and direct power. The focal center of Elena’s “kingdom” is the very rich palace in which she lives surrounded by her loved ones and the people who work with and for her. It is an enormous mansion with a Renaissance and decadent style in which it is not difficult to trace the same opulent style that distinguishes the Royal Palace of Caserta and that of Versailles, to give two examples. The greatness of the place, then, reflects directly on the government of a chancellor who has chosen to keep her closest allies close, without ever abandoning its walls in favor of direct meetings with the outside world. Such a daily life, together with enormous responsibilities and daily stress, soon transformed the protagonist of The Regime into a woman in conflict with herself, whose mental instabilities push her towards sensations and disorders in this sense on the agenda.
Whether it’s crazy hypochondria or the purest paranoia, Elena carries forward her vision, which is always supported in every way. The situation, however, seems to evolve unexpectedly when we see her hire Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts), an ex-military who earned the nickname Butcher following a bloody massacre of civilians on the battlefield. The contact between the two, completely different, seems to lead to a particular subcutaneous understanding with completely unexpected implications. Zubak’s violent firmness finds a respectable place in the mental insecurities of Elena who seems to draw certainty from the hard and insanely authoritarian character of the Butcher. Not only that, but her desire for power will also soon lead to some very questionable political choices, ready to undermine the already precarious general stability and reliability of her image in people’s eyes.
The Regime Review and Analysis
The Regime is an unexpectedly courageous series, especially given the interpretative scope of its voice on the small screen. The succession of situations, even grotesque ones at the center of the main action, hides a discussion that immediately becomes direct and engaging with the viewers at home. The greatest and most fascinating value of this TV series lies in the direct dialogue with people, capable of arousing curiosity and capturing thanks to a series of well-considered and balanced choices and formal elements in this sense. Everything is inevitably channeled and enhanced by the great performance of Kate Winslet who is perfectly at ease with a part that is certainly not easy to construct, due to her macro and micro details. There is no need to dwell too much on the power dynamics in progress, or on the characters in the background who try to pull the invisible threads of the narrative.
Winslet’s simple stage presence breaks the screen immediately, dragging you into a context that is difficult to fully predict and share. Elena’s character and her path, both mental and introspective, govern the entire progression of The Regime, shaping the vision of a multifaceted and unreadable character in its entirety, drawn by a series of problems with which even the same viewers are required to deal with the entire story of the miniseries. First of all the senseless hypochondria punctuate the fixations in this sense. The anxiety for the air she breathes, for what she eats, or for the hot flashes, will soon transform into real senseless, grotesque curtains with traits readily supported by subordinates, family members, and allies. Thus, life itself in the palace soon becomes a direct reflection of what Elena feels or thinks she feels at the moment, a true projection of her mental disorders and torments of the environment, including the human one, that surrounds her.
In the spasmodic excesses of a nation that is both very distant and very close at the same time, criticism is formed that relates directly to our reality, exploiting the profound problems of a protagonist who basks in her power, without caring about the consequences of her vision. In this sense, The Regime hits hard and leaves its mark. Her story is a speech that immediately finds appeal to the most attentive eye and is capable of connecting the dots, even the most absurd and senseless, on the screen. When witnessing the dance to the faces and masks of an imaginary kingdom you always laugh through gritted teeth, given that the great fascination of this product for the small screen can be found especially in what you say more indirectly.
In The Regime, Kate Winslet shines like never before. The English actress, who became famous with the film Titanic when she was only 22 years old, gives the audience an unprecedented performance in this series which stands out for its out-of-the-ordinary plot and for that incredible skill in dealing with biting satire, hilarious jokes, and crazy scenes but with great visual and communicative impact, very profound themes linked to contemporary world politics. A work of great intelligence, The Regime shows how, thanks to a subtle irony and the talent of a perfectly chosen cast, it is possible to create a little gem that speaks to the public with frankness, and irony and offers a lot of entertainment but also a lot of depth. In The Regime we laugh and are shocked at the same time, we reflect and become passionate about the absurd but not so far-fetched events of a woman who, with her beliefs, her fixations, her mood swings, and her attitude selfish and dictatorial, he sends an entire country to ruin for following his ideals which he never questions, even when he has all the evidence to do so.
Although it does not refer to specific places or particular political facts, The Regime suggests a lot between the lines and is a winning series both for its irreverent and brilliant script and for the skill of its actors, first and foremost, Kate Winslet who pierces the screen and gives an impeccable performance. Let yourself be overwhelmed by the crazy world of Chancellor Helena Vernham, let yourself be surprised by Kate Winslet’s skill, and dive into this unbalanced but very intelligent story because it will be worth it. A piece of advice, watch the series in the original language! In The Regime, Kate Winslet plays the role of a paradoxically weak and dangerously fickle authoritarian leader, governed without her knowledge on the one hand by a dusty, greedy, and outdated ruling class, on the other by the violent Corporal Zubak, soldier from the disturbing past that will progressively mislead the mind and the public and private actions of the political leader, so much to shape the face of a renewed autocracy in the image and likeness of the complex character played by Matthias Schoenarts.
A bit like wanting to suggest that the main target of Will Tracy’s television farce is to hit and sink the vices, virtues, tics, oddities, and subsequent weaknesses of the European totalitarianism of yesterday and today. With an eye towards the complicated and dramatic current geopolitical situation, in particular that of a Europe subjected to the very dangerous whims and threats of Vladimir Putin, leader of Russia from whom Kate Winslet herself seems to have openly been inspired in giving life to Elena Vernham, the enigmatic protagonist of a fictional story centered on a paranoid, hypochondriac and egocentric tyrant, who seeks reassurance by conversing with her father’s embalmed body. A mirror reflection of a hypothetical imperfect totalitarianism whose content The Regime takes on board through an acute narrative between political intrigue, a taste for the grotesque, and the false structure of a contemporary biopic.
It is no coincidence that three of the episodes of the miniseries arriving on HBO Max starting from 4 March 2024 are directed by none other than the British director Stephen Frears, who in 2006 made the seminal The Queen together with playwright Peter Morgan, who created the Netflix series The Crown a few years later. The same original music of the miniseries was curiously entrusted to Alexandre Desplat, who with Frears had curated the themes and melodies of the film dedicated to Elizabeth II with Helen Mirren. The Regime is on balance a satirical and farcical narrative that follows the classic structure of the contemporary biographical tale (it is easy to see in Winslet’s Elena Vernham grotesque echoes of the last English sovereign, or of the controversial Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher) to finally become a hilarious and irresistible product for the small screen that mocks with a skillful irony not only the fascination of the powerful woman but the entire bureaucratic system of totalitarianism of yesterday and today, showing its cracks.
It’s not a series for everyone, no. For some, getting into Elena’s mood, an indispensable factor for enjoying the show to the fullest, will certainly not be easy. But it is also a series that everyone should see, mainly for two reasons. For the warning it issues, underlining how leaving certain characters to act undisturbed risks leading to social catastrophes and for the extraordinary performances it gives, from the first to the last actor involved in the project, including Martha Plimpton that my generation remembers from The Goonies and followed in the brilliant sitcom Help Me, Hope! today in the role of a United States Senator sent to confront Elena only because she is a woman. Because, in the crazy world built by a woman, it is still the men who decree that every woman is crazy as such. And in a complex narrative design like that of The Regime, the conclusion tells us unequivocally what happens to those men. Because it’s not a gender issue, it’s just (and always has been) a power issue.
The Regime Review: The Last Words
The miniseries created by Will Tracy and partly directed by Stephen Frears seems like the satirical and cheeky relative of biographical stories such as The Queen and The Crown, even if at the same time it mocks with clever irony not only the fascination of the woman of power, but the entire bureaucratic system of yesterday’s and today’s totalitarianisms, showing its cracks. The Regime exploits the undeniable stage presence of Kate Winslet, the writing of Will Tracy, and the direction of Stephen Frears and Jessica Hobbs to set up a miniseries that undeniably leaves its mark on viewers. At the center of it all, we find a woman of power and a mad kingdom easily traceable in some contexts of our reality. In the aesthetic, grotesque, and destabilizing magnificence of its humor, we find a story in images that wants to break the limits of the small screen, also making us reflect. Satire is a central element as are all the exaggerations desired and constructed to leave something to the home audience.
The Regime Review: We Find A Story In Images That Wants To Break The Limits Of The Small Screen - Filmyhype
Director: Will Tracy
Date Created: 2024-03-04 17:19
4
Pros
- Kate Winslet in all her splendor and in the construction of a complex, multifaceted and difficult to decipher protagonist.
- The direction and staging in general.
- Satire.
- The cast around the protagonist.
Cons
- Some finds are not easy to translate.
- In some things it's not too original.
