Amazon.com video review:
Set in a time when a buildup of toxic chemicals has made most people
sterile, Volker Schlondorff's film offers a disturbing view of a society
under martial law in which fertile women are captured and made into handmaids
to bear children for rich and infertile matrons. The film unfolds from the
eyes of newly converted handmaid Kate (Natasha Richardson). She is trapped
in this mysogynistic society which both deifies these fertile women as
prized possessions and condemns them as whores. Throughout the story Kate
has to cope with the jealousy of the woman she serves (Faye Dunaway), the
advances of her sleazy military husband (the Commander, played by Robert
Duvall), and the loss of her daughter, who has been shuttled off to a
similarly aristocratic setting. She also falls in love with one of the
Commander's security guards (Aidan Quinn), who sympathizes with her plight
and potentially offers her a way out. Throughout The Handmaid's Tale,
issues of feminism, abortion rights, male dominance, and conservative
religious politics all come under fire. Some may view the film itself as
antifemale considering its concepts, but it is quite the opposite.
Instead it shows how only through solidarity can women bring down an
overriding patriarchical mindset. The film, which works from Harold
Pinter's screenplay adaption of
Margaret Atwood's novel,
features strong
performances from those mentioned as well as Elizabeth McGovern and
Victoria Tennant. --Bryan Reesman
