The Handmaid's Tale (1990)

Sadly Over-hyped

hyped garbage

In truth, any opportunity to see the film on the big screen is welcome.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This movie made me dig up my old IMDb account I never planned on reviving, that's how bad I find it to be although feel free to ignore my post because I liked the book better so I might be a little biased here. Those who didn't read the book might find this movie tolerable.The top reason I dislike this movie is because it utterly disregards the last meta-fictional part of the book which was so crucial to the story written by Margaret Atwood. The entire narration is actually a lost diary of your very average person who is no writer but finds herself suddenly trapped in the cogs of theocratic totalitarianism and still manages to "record" her thoughts on tapes and paper (what you read) to preserve her sanity just like Winston Smith from Nineteen Eighty-Four did which later is found and used as a retrospective account of a "bygone world" in a free civilization that studies barbaric aspects of its history, giving it a rather optimistic ending which was absent in the movie or just replaced with a watered-down Hollywoodish "I'll find you, baby. Oh look, it's the auspicious sunset *faces the sunset while smiling*" ending (living as an "unwoman" in a trailer park, is that Volker Schlöndorff's idea how to end this movie?).Handmaid's Tale without its proper context as a historic "document" is just pointless. Film adaptations like this convince me that some books are simply impossible to be adapted either out of budget reasons or other and if you still go ahead and make it, you'll end up with a pointless Hollywood's assembly line flick that shares original work's name only and is nothing but an empty shell of it, filled with popcorn audience-appeasing violent filler.Two stars for costumes which were far more impressive than those I made up in my head and the "All-Seeing Eye" design which while not original (you can see it on every one dollar bill, the symbol of Christianity's Trinity) is still profound and in this hypothetical world probably as scary as a Nazi Germany's swastika.- - P.S. One would be really tempted to draw parallels with what's happening in the US in 2017 and the plot of Handmaid's Tale with Planned Parenthood being threatened to be defunded, abortion clinics all over the country threatened to lose federal funding unless they, um, stop performing abortions, evangelical-approved far-right "Family Groups," one of them designated as a "hate group" by the Southern Law Poverty Center, sent to the UN Women's Rights Conference (2017) as representatives of US women's interest (I wish this was satire) and while the President was not shot yet and replaced with federal theocratic dictators that systematically tread on the rights of women I think that's all it is, a tempting suggestion. I wouldn't be so far from right if I called it a "cautionary tale" though.(2018 update: Flick is hardly worth even one star, let's be honest now.)

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.

Margaret Atwood's acclaimed novel, adapted for the screen and turned into a high-minded but posed, uncomfortable human drama, despite an expert cast. Taking place in the soulless distant future, all young women have been turned into child-breeders for wealthy, infertile couples, with Nastasha Richardson assigned to nightmarish twosome Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway. Elizabeth McGovern plays a lesbian who hopes to make a break for it (every totalitarian society should have one). Certainly watchable, though an icy cold presentation which promises to be much more than it is. Richardson doesn't flash a hint of her feisty personality, though McGovern is very good and Duvall does what he can with a terrible role. ** from ****

While it's true that "The Handmaid's Tale" is a rotten movie, it does have the excuse of being based on a rotten novel. Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood's anti-American screed was lame enough when first published in 1985; having recently reread the book, I can confirm that "The Handmaid's Tale" hasn't improved with age.The sheer preposterousness of Atwood's scenario, her patent dislike of the Colossus of the South and her progressive finger wagging pretty much sink the book. In the movie, though her scenario remains more or less intact, Atwood's ideological preoccupations get short shrift. As a result, the movie does possess a certain entertainment value—providing that the viewer chooses to regard it as a parody or spoof. If, for example, we didn't know that Atwood was serious, the sexual protocols of the Republic of Gilead would seem a stroke of comic genius. So I can't thoroughly despise this piece of cinematic dreck. "The Handmaid's Tale" does for progressive earnestness what "Valley of the Dolls" does for pill popping: makes it seem really funny, though with absolutely no intention of raising a laugh.