Other Titles • The Handmaid's Tale • Die Geschichte der Dienerin (1990)
Synopses for The Handmaid's Tale (1990)
1.
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
2.
Based on Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, THE HANDMAID'S TALE presents a harrowing vision of (as the film's opening legend reads) "the very near future." In Gilead, formerly the United States, a series of ecological disasters rendering most women infertile has been followed by a coup d’état by puritanical right-wing fundamentalists. Attempting to escape the increasingly unjust and brutal oligarchy, Kate (Natasha Richardson) is captured by border guards while her husband is killed and her daughter lost. Because she is fertile, Kate is sent for training as a handmaid, where she meets the defiant Moira (Elizabeth McGovern). Kate then becomes handmaid to the Commander (Robert Duvall) and is forced to enact a ceremony, based on the biblical story of Rachel, in which she lies between the Commander and his infertile wife, Serena Joy (Faye Dunaway), so he can impregnate her. The ceremony leaves Serena Joy angry, the Commander unfulfilled, and Kate humiliated, rebellious, and desperate for freedom.
The splendid performance of the ensemble cast is highlighted by McGovern's wrenching turn as the disaffected "gender traitor." Celebrated playwright Harold Pinter supplies a stark, affecting screenplay for director Volker Schlöndorff (THE TIN DRUM), who retains all the sting of Atwood's feminist classic by sculpting a frighteningly plausible futuristic parable.
3.
"Quite Absorbing." -The Washington Post
With a "cool eroticism, intelligence and intensity" (Playboy), this eerie futuristic thriller, based on Margaret Atwood's controversial and critically acclaimed best-selling novel, is filled with "large themes and deep thoughts" (Roger Ebert). Boasting a phenomenal cast including Natasha Richardson (Nell) and Oscar® winners Faye Dunaway (Network) and Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies), this film "dazzles with its ingenuity and shocks with its outrageousness" (WNCN Radio)!
In the not-so-distant future, strong-willed and beautiful Kate (Richardson) possesses a precious commodity that most women have lost and most men want to control… fertility. Forced into a brain-washing bootcamp that turns fertile women into surrogate mothers for social-elite men and their infertile wives, Kate thinks she's made out well when she's assigned to an eminent party leader (Duvall). But when she learns that he's sterile, she's faced with the impossible choice: produce him an heir or die!
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