The anthem of was, from its very , Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now.” If you’ll recall, that was the song chancellor Elena Vernham (Kate Winslet) serenaded her husband with at a lavish function back when her government seemed to be doing swimmingly. Her people adored her (or so she thought). Her advisors supported her every move (or so they led her to believe). And her standing in the international community seemed to be finally improving (or so she insisted). By the time we catch up with Elena in this finale episode, it’s obvious that this last year in her fictional central European country has been rough. She’s on the lam, in fact. Herbert (Matthias Schoenaerts) has successfully snuck the besieged chancellor away from the palace and out into…a field. Which is not the safest place to be. But it is the best place for these two to come to grips with their circumstances. Elena, it seems, is still living in delusion land. She’s convinced that if only her people could see her they would, you know, rise up against these pesky rebels and keep her government aloft. Alas, she’s left railing against her current situation while wearing a stylish red dress, looking like the saddest little red riding hood (with a wolf as her bodyguard) there ever was. Her delusion and denial are clearly putting them in peril and so, as they move out toward any kind of safe haven (they end up at one of Nicky’s poetry centers), we see Winslet and Schoenaerts do what they’ve been doing best: imbue their characters and their vexing dynamic to life in ways that always rise above the writing of the show. Indeed, has always excelled when it’s focused on Elena and Herbert’s mercurial relationship. And stripped away from everything and everyone else, their interactions here are what I wish more of could’ve been: a tense tête a tête between a vain narcissistic capitalist and a loud, brutish socialist. For that’s where the most interesting kernel of drama lays in this beautifully mounted
HBO show. Alas, even in this last episode of this Will Tracy-created limited series, we don’t get to see that tension play out. Sure, we see Herbert pressing Elena as to whether she really was going to hand over power to him the night before (Winslet’s ability to play all of Elena’s levels of performance remains a beauty) and witnessing the two assessing whether they can truly trust one another. But then we’re off, hoping to find a safe haven in a nearby town. That’s what eventually leads them to stopping random drivers on the road (all avoiding the newly established curfew courtesy of the budding Westgate government). Only one of them, a drunk fool, agrees to help, squirreling them into his apartment. How that gets them any closer to safety is unclear. Elena still imagines she could abscond to
China. Or maybe meet Nicky in Europe. Alas, she may not get to do any of that since she’s betrayed by the fool who’d agreed to help them, who’s ready to sell her to the rebels, trapping she and Herbert in his bedroom as he calls a family member to come collect the former chancellor. Elena goes into a panic while Herbert begins tearing everything around him apart. They’re now cornered prey. She even begins stabbing herself with a wooden stake (bit vampiric, that) only to be yet again saved by her fearless soldier. But who will they have to face now? Laskin (Danny Webb) as it turns out! He’s part of the new National Freedom Front and, since abdicating his position in the Vernham government, he’s managed to weasel his way back into power: Parliament has been dissolved and, with Elena’s capture, the hope is that a somewhat peaceful transition of power can be arranged. To do this, Laskin separates Elena from Herbert and tries to pit them against one another, telling each that the other betrayed them: “She used you to plump her ego, and now the country is dying,” he pleads with Herbert. “She’s killing us!” Neither are as easy to break as he’d imagined. Elena soon realizes she still has the upper hand. They need her for a legal transition and, from what she gathers, Laskin doesn’t yet have the support he needs. He tries ordering her to sign what they need but she replies with the usual Elena flair: “You couldn’t order a fucking omelette!” (Side note: where was this level of writing elsewhere in the season? That’s a Selina Meyer-level line!) Thankfully Laskin knows Elena’s weakness and so a mere glance at a clear sharpie’d tank that reads “Danger Black Mould” is all it takes for her to cave. She’ll sign and do whatever! Alas, that wouldn’t be the end of it. As she and Herbert are about to be transferred out of the building, their guards (and Laskin!) are shot in the head. Our two hostages pass hands and are taken to a different location: There, they are greeted by another man whom Elena had wronged before and who, perhaps, has it in him to offer her a way out. As Herbert is shuttled away, Elena comes face to face with Emil Bartos (Stanley Townsend) whom we’d last seen being humiliated on live television by Elena. It is now he who has the upper hand. He’s interested in quelling the civil war that’s raging right outside. War (and partisanship) is bad for business, he says, but really, he couldn’t stand idly by. He basically offers Elena a way back in, with the help of the Americans (which would require a rebuking of China) and with just one caveat: a sacrificial lamb in the shape of one Herbert Zubak. Will she take the deal? Could she really betray Herbert, who’d stood by her through it all? A cleansing shower and a look at herself in the mirror (without her wig, we finally get to see the face beneath the face) allow her to make up her mind. “The Americans are here. They want to take our country from us and they want me to kneel,” she informs Herbert. In a testament to Winslet’s performance, it’s hard to read whether all she’s feeding Herbert is a way to have him acquiesce or a way to steel herself for what she’s about to do. Which is, of course, what you most expect her to do: sell him out and establish herself back in power, brushing aside all that happened in the year prior as some sort of “wobble” she’s now recovered from. Herbert, of course, was killed in his sleep, and the Vernham government, now with clearer ties to the U.S., was able to recenter itself. We see all this as Elena readies herself for her ninth Victory Day celebration; we’re back to where it all began last year. As Elena delivers a rousing speech to her people (from a Pope-mobile-esque pulpit in her balcony), she’s clearly just going through the motions. She won but also lost. She’s hoping to usher in a new era, a new Europe, but all of it sounds very much like the old era, like the old Europe: one driven by capitalist foreign investors and
American shadow governments, one where corruption rots everything from the top and leaves little for those down below. Elena has even replaced one dead father figure for another: Herbert has been embalmed and now rests where her dad used to. “I am no one without all of you,” Elena proclaims. “And so I bless you all, and I bless our love. Always.” You can hear, in her voice, a steeliness that’s nevertheless quite tenuous, quite fragile. It makes sense that we return, then, to “If You Leave Me Now”: was always a love story, not one between Elena and her husband (oh yeah, Nicky’s back!) and perhaps not even between Elena and Herbert (though there was a tender, twisted kind of love there), but between Elena and her sense of power. This was a vain romance; she never did hear anymore than she wanted to and never did reach farther than her own idea of victory in her head. She loved being in power, loved being in control (or at least loved thinking she had any). A love like that is hard to find; it’s harder still to leave behind. Does that add up to a particularly trenchant satirical critique of modern autocracy? I don’t really think so, not at least in the way presented it. But hey, at least we got yet another great Winslet performance out of it.