Friday, December 02, 2022

Servant S2 E16

In E15, as Vasya is packing, with Dmitry present, lurking over the presidency like the vulture he is, Olya hears the news and rushes to the presidential office. She wears a look of hurt and guilt. Dmitry asks her to excuse him and Vasily and shuts the door.

In E16 Dmitry is remaking the presidency in his, and in the oligarchs, image: asking Mikhail, the head of state security, to stay as he is "indispensable", i.e. to getting Yurya back; meeting with the oligarchs and taking their orders; and in this scene, in the back seat of the presidential limousine with his Finance Minister, lover, and Vasily's ex-, Olya:


Olya is sick, despondent. She has never betrayed Dmitry's link to the oligarchs and has thereby betrayed Vasya. There comes then a masterpiece of screencraft. After the phone call Dmitry reaches over and puts his hand on Olya's. The camera is a close-up of their hands.

Right before Olya feels Dmitry's touch the third and fourth fingers of her right hand lie naturally at the hem of her dress.



 
The instant she feels the touch her third and fourth fingers subtly jerk up in recoil


She is disgusted with Dmitry and sick with guilt.
 
Dmitry knows.




Before and after this exquisite scene the camera shows the other cabinet ministers dazed and preoccupied. The episode ends with Vasya and his father sitting on a bench fishing in the river in front of the family's home.Vasya gets up to go back in the house and turns:

All of his ministers--except Olya--my love Okana and Vasya's driver Tolik, have come to get him. This scene, and of course Zelensky-as-screenwriter knew this, is intentional parallel to Stalin's ministers going to get him when he disappeared to a similar remote setting after Operation Barbarossa began. Stalin thought they had come to arrest him. A very nice episode, S2 E16.