THE HANDMAID'S TALE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: THE HANDMAID'S TALE preaches to the choir in a rather formulaic look at a dismal possible (if unlikely) future where women have no rights. Robert Duvall's worst performance in memory highlights one of the less convincing arguments for feminism. Rating: low 0.
Back in the 1960s there were a number of science fiction films about horrible repressive futures. These films got their vision of the future by a fairly simple turn-the-crank formula: pick a current hot concern; imagine a society in which nobody or almost nobody has this concern. Now what will society be like with nobody worried about this issue? Pretty ugly, right? These films were all pretty much logical descendents of Orwell's novel 1984, but that did it back when it was still original. Films along these lines include SOYLENT GREEN, Z.P.G., FAHRENHEIT 451, and THE LAST CHILD, and I would also include SILENT RUNNING. Eventually the public started finding these exaggerated dystopic futures too dreary, so the ones without much action died out and the ones with more action became mindless films such as THE LAST CHASE and finally MAD MAX. As a literary style it did not go away and the occasional dystopic film like BRAZIL was still made on slightly more abstract issues such as bureaucracy. This year the dystopic science fiction film is represented by THE HANDMAID'S TALE, about a future brought about by apathy to feminist issues.
It has been said that repressive views towards women see them as madonnas or whores. In this film, each woman is forced into the roles of whore, servant, or madonna, wearing uniforms of red, white, or blue, respectively. 99% of the women were left infertile after the plague. If they can afford it, these women become the madonnas; if not, they are servants. Those who are fertile become the handmaids. Their job is to be surrogate childbearers for the madonnas. The process by which they come to bear children starts by sending them to indoctrination centers which use Orwellian mind control techniques, but which seem to be curiously ineffective at winning hearts and minds. From there they are farmed out to homes where first they are ritually read the Biblical story of infertile Rachel getting a child with the help of a handmaid. After that, they are impregnated in a curious ritual involved lying between the legs of one of the madonnas while her husband does the dirty deed.
The film opens with Kate (played by Natasha Richardson), her husband, and her daughter trying to flee across the border. Her husband is killed and she does not know what happened to her daughter. After the first shock, all this she takes with a calm regret. This means that between Margaret Atwood's book and Harold Pinter's screenplay somebody did not know how humans behave. The film follows Kate through her indoctrination into the society of handmaids and her assignment to the household of callous, selfish evangelist Serena Joy (played by Faye Dunaway) and her flat, cardboard husband, the Commander. This role is quite a departure for Robert Duvall, who usually acts in his films. The only film that Duvall was in but contributed less to was INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. To director Volker Schlondorff does the dubious honor of being the only director ever to wring an uninteresting performance from Duvall.
While the film was colorful, with lots of costumes, in many ways the production values were poor. In a scene where the main character is holding yarn, she has two strands when seen from the front and at least six seen an instant later from the back. Also at one point a woman gives birth to a surprisingly clean six-month-old baby. And speaking of such scenes, for a film taking a stand against the exploitation of women, this film has more than its share of half-naked and scantily clad women and most of the nudity is gratuitous.
Director Schlondorff used to direct ABC "After-School Specials" and his style does not seem to have gotten any more subtle. I rate this film a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale. Unless you embrace any film on a feminist theme, I do not recommend THE HANDMAID'S TALE.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzx!leeper
leeper@mtgzx.att.com
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews