swilliky
Margaret Atwood's nightmarish Gilead was first brought to the screen in 1990. Kate (Natasha Richardson) is introduced on the run trying to escape across the border of Gilead but she is caught. Her husband is shot and her child is lost in the wilderness. She is shipped off to a camp where they are sorting through the people by race. Trucks of people are shipped away as women proved to be without illness and viable for pregnancy are sent to conditioning. Many women suffer breakdowns during the harsh treatment as the vicious tutors like Aunt Lydia (Victoria Tennant) degrade them in order to convert them to their new lifestyle. Once Kate shows good behavior, she is presented to the family as a potential surrogate. She will assist Serena Joy (Faye Dunaway) and the Commander (Robert Duvall) by allowing her body be used to have a baby. This forced surrogacy occurs in an odd ceremony where the wife hold the handmaid down while the husband has sex with her. The Commander takes a liking to Kate, now Offred, and plays games with her in his private office, also rewarding her with old beauty magazines. Dressed in a red uniform and a veil, Offred is allowed to go shopping amidst security guards who scan her security bracelet and a fellow handmaid Ofglen (Blanche Baker).Check out more of this review and others at swilliky.com
Blueghost
I've seen this film twice. Once in my social studies class in high school, and I think once more on HBO or something.I didn't find the film all that interesting. It was a sci-fi dystopic- jab at religious fundamentalism. In this case Christianity, which to me didn't seem to plausible.And I guess that's the key element of my review. The society portrayed seem to have this strange quasi-hybrid matriarchal tinge over a patriarchal society. Reproduction is regimented and given a ceremony. A comment on social conventions that grate against social freedoms. It's an old theme, though given a unique flavor in this play.Like a lot of sci-fi it's a bit of a warning, but one that strikes me as being a bit more fanciful than anything else. No matter how you dress it up it just doesn't stand to reason that anyone, for any length of time, would ever put up with the draconian measures used to clamp down on sexuality.I don't remember too much else about this film, other than I didn't bother to see it again. If you must, then see it once.Watch at your own risk.
Robert J. Maxwell
I haven't read Margaret Atwood's novel but judging from this movie version of it, I'd have to guess she dislikes social constraints, war, patriarchal societies, and religion.It's the future, kind of, without much in the way of futuristic technology but a social order that amount to a projection of women's fantasies circa 1970. The Commander (Robert Duvall) rules the roost, and what a roost it is, and with what a codified pecking order. Toxic substances have so polluted our resources that 99 out of 100 women have been rendered sterile. The remaining fertile ones are put through a kind of Fascist Esalen Institute and have their collective consciousness raised. Like the rest of the community -- except for the Rebels who blow things up once in a while -- the school is based on the Old Testament and everyone goes around mouthing clichés like "may the Lord open." The more adaptable of the handmaids graduate and their wardrobe changes from scarlet to a rich blue. The ones who misbehave are punished. Slight infractions include such perversions as masturbation and they lead to the bastinado. More serious breaches of the code, such as fornication, lead to the noose. Sex is for procreation, not recreation. And the Commander has his choice of students whom he tries ad seriatim to impregnate. What he doesn't know is that while his chosen partners may be fertile, he's shooting blanks. The reason he doesn't know this is that men aren't tested, just women.The plot is a little too crazy to describe in detail. The eponymous handmaid is Natasha Richardson, and she takes a lover on the side, Aidan Quinn. The Commander gets what's coming to him, I guess, and the film ends hopefully.Wow, this story dates badly, gushing as it does from the same well as "The Stepford Wives." The difference is that "The Stepford Wives" was so ludicrous as to be funny. (Even the author, Ira Levin, joked about it.) This one takes itself seriously.I don't know where to begin in trying to assess this. The only time this brainwashed student body can express anger is during public executions. There is a scene in which the red-robed young women of the school loose their pustular passion on some poor guy who's supposedly raped a woman. (Actually, "he's a political.") This horde of women descend on him like a pack of African wild dogs and literally rip his head off. It may be a little unlady-like but it happens. When the Mojave Indians waged war, they would stun their enemies and throw the bodies back to the women, where the victim would be systematically deboned and excoriated. And that's nothing, compared to my ex wife.There are many different ways to impregnate a woman to insure the survival of the species but anything other than the old-fashioned way is abjured because the Bible doesn't have anything in it about modern technology. Natasha Richardson must put up with matter-of-fact couplings during her periods of ovulation, and she winds up cutting Duvall's throat, even though he's grown a little fond of her over the months. Not in LOVE with her. He's too insensitive for that. But fond of her in the way that we might be fond of a pet cat or dog.There is a shot of black people being rounded up and hauled away by armed guards. And that scene reminded me of a popular essay from the late 1960s, passed from hand to hand, when everyone wanted Victim Power. It was written, I think, by some college student and entitled "The Student as N*****." Everyone wanted to be compared to blacks -- exploited, looked down upon, and generally held in contempt.The movie reflects this desire for victimhood paradoxically. It rejects the exercise of power by endorsing the empowerment of women. Most "anti-war" movies are similarly configured. We can revel in the horrors our men and women undergo while winning the war and still leave the theater filled with jingoistic pride and ready to kick butt someplace else. Cecil B. DeMille was fond of demonstrating how disgusting decadence and sex were by showing us as much of it as he could.The acting isn't bad, except for Victoria Tennant, who has never uttered a believable line in any of her films. Natasha Richardson is about perfect in the part of the victimized handmaid. She's been there before as Patty Hearst. And she fits the part -- petite, winsome, and thoughtful too. Elizabeth McGovern has the role of the requisite wise guy, secretly rebellious, earthy and full of common sense. Every prison story needs this character.I don't really think, though, that men want to dominate women in the heartless way this film shows, though no doubt that men would like cooperative and, at times, compliant wives, just as women would like husbands who aren't ashamed to talk about relationships and weep. If nothing else, every human being, regardless of sex, has a mother and that fact must in some way shape our attitudes towards women in general. Atwood's paranoid vision is flawed, an obsession rather than a fully thought-out image of what we all are.
pdwigington
Here is some trivia that probably belongs in the trivia section but I could not figure out how to add it there. The scene where Kate (Offred) stabs the Commander, as well as the garden and kitchen scenes were filmed at the former home of Mike Peterson in Durham, NC, . He was accused and convicted of killing his wife and currently in prison. The murder took place in the house, which is a relative mansion. Also, scenes were filmed on Duke University campus and well as downtown Raleigh, NC. I know this because I have friends who were extras in the film. If you enjoy bad science fiction then this film will be great for you. I actually liked it despite its "B" movie quality. Its much different then the novel, as the book talks about the situation in flashbacks, like you were learning it in a history class.
