Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Danny Webb, Andrea Riseborough, Guillaume Gallienne, Henry Goodman, David Bamber, Rory Keenan, Louie Mynett, Martha Plimpton, Stanley Townsend, Alasdair Hankinson, Michael Colgan, Patrick Fusco, Pippa Haywood, Hugh Grant.
Regimes never fall, they just undergo a personality change.
In truth all revolutions ultimately fail because the void they leave is too immense for anything other than the status quo to fill it; it is why you arguably only ever have extremes of government in so called democratic countries, never a middle of the road leadership, a third party truly doing anything other than playing to the conscious of the crowd.
To capture the irony of such, to take issue and condemn the political make up of The Regime that sits on the people’s throne, is the preserve of all, but it must be achieved with wit and an understanding to ridicule not out of a perspective of mean intolerance, but with a scalpel that is decisive, quick, meaningful, and full of communication. It is the ability to raise up the spectre of dishonest politics by pointing out its inherent flaws in a comedic setting that gives us hope that the situation may alter; even if we know deep down that the only thing that will be revolutionised is the facts in favour of what went before.
The Regime is glossy, it has acting royalty within its framework, and it has its eyes firmly fixed on the narration of the small republic being torn apart by its leader who craves love and devotion, and by the urgency of its farce which is refreshingly not played for laughs but to burn the truth of the situation into our subconscious.
Kate Winslet steps easily into the role of the flawed and vanity driven Chancellor Elana Vernham, and with superb performances by Matthias Schoenaerts, Danny Webb, Andrea Riseborough, and the sublime David Bamber, the nuances of female dictatorship play heavily on the audience’s mind, the subtly of Ms. Winslet’s character asking for love and devotion in a way that a man could never do is revealing of the political divide and the absurdity of cruelty delivered with an airbrushed face.
It is telling in the final acts just how much a mask can slip and then be preserved as an act of sensitivity, placed back on the leader’s face just to show how much the country only wants stability, only ever requires an apology for it to be soon forgotten and the continual cycle of political dogma to reassert itself once more.
Regimes never fall, like Frankenstein’s monster it is soon resurrected by the hand behind the switch and given animated life once more.
Ian D. Hall