Review of The Handmaid's Tale (1990) by Maggie L — 19 Jun 2007

The Handmaid's Tale is, according to Netflix "[A] chilling adaptation of Margaret Atwood?s dystopian novel." Perhaps I was not in a mood to be chilled, but I found very little of this story to be compelling. The plot, though it may have been progressive in the early 1990's, did not have the creative bite I had hoped for. An apocalyptic future in which the wrong sort of idealistic people are in power and wield their devastating will at the expense of others--it is a plot line without novelty, and other movies have told similar kinds of stories with far better results (A Clockwork Orange and The Matrix, just to name two).

The difference in this film, of course, is that the antagonists are fundamentalist Christians. The movie attempts to follow the book's story line to this end, but it does not maintain the vigor or focus of Margaret Atwood's original composition. Whereas the novel triumphed in its pointed polemics--against subjugation of women, religious power structures, etc.--the movie wanders around aimlessly like a blindfolded child who never succeeds in pinning the tale on the donkey. The filmmaker should have chosen more carefully which of Atwood's themes to develop.

I think my biggest frustration with this movie was its static characterizations. Who was Moira? Who was Nick? For that matter, who was Kate? What motivated them to do the things they did? It is crucial that a movie present believable characters with believable motivations. After having watched this film, I could not say if the characters motivations were convincing because they were not even apparent. As with the plot, the filmmaker tried to do too many things with the characters. In the end, he did not do any of them particularly well. This movie made a sprawling and convoluted mess out of Atwood's brilliant and vibrant novel. What a shame.