The Handmaid's Tale

I finally watched this after watching the TV show and if anything, it shows that some books should not be adapted unless there is enough time to tell the story.

The film tries to feature the key moments that the TV show had time to bring up, and 90 minutes (or so) simply isn't enough.

The casting is flawed on several characters, like many reviewers point at, and the script feels rushed, which of course creates the feeling that the story progresses without any logic.

Nonetheless you will find some scenes are really good, and in fact, those same scenes found their way into the TV show.

The atmosphere of the book is well conveyed, I just wish they had had more time, which the largely superior TV show had.

Watch this for reference after reading the book, after watching the show : great books can make awesome TV shows but poor films sometimes.

This movie, based on Margaret Atwood's story, concerns a woman living in the not too distant future in the Republic of Gilead, a country that was once the United States. The country is now run by fundamentalist Christians who have demoted all women to a second class citizenship. Nuclear war has made most women infertile, so the government has forced all the fertile women to serve as handmaids and bear children for the leaders and their infertile wives as part of a biblical prophecy. The infertile women are sent off to toil as slaves and clean up nuclear waste. This movie concerns one handmaid, Offred (Kate) and her struggle to escape Gilead, find her daughter, and flee to Canada. Not a bad movie at all, all the actors do very well. The material just runs very slow at points, and the character's aren't all that well developed.

I have just one point to make about this film, and that is why on earth did the director decided to name Offred kate. In the book, which I hope to god the producers etc actually read, there is no mention of the name kate what so ever, the only name that we could possibly guess would be June which is supplied to us in the first chapter but even then we never learn her real name. And this is of great significant importance, the fact that we as readers or viewers never learn her name means something and to simply choose a name out of a hat is destroying a piece of the character created for us by Margaret Attwood. Also reading the plot outline makes me wonder whether whoever wrote that even saw the film, especially where it says "Kate is a criminal, guilty of the crime of trying to escape from the US, and is sentenced to become a Handmaid." when really "KATE" becomes a handmaid as her husband was married once before and their marriage never really existed in the eyes of the law. Also i read on to see that "After ruthless group training by Serena Joy in the proper way to behave, Kate is assigned as Handmaid to the Commander." Well that is not at all true as anyone who has seen this film will notice that Serena Joy is the commanders wife and not one of the Aunts and the Red Centre. Please in the future get your facts right and also thanks to director Volker Schlöndorff for ruining a perfectly enjoyable book. My advice stick to the book and not the watered down version for the small minded.

An unfortunate movie which is definitely more like Harold Pinter's earlier plays than anything Margaret Atwood ever produced. No attempt is made to bring out Atwood's clever social message, and we're all supposed to be shocked at the sexual content. A shame, because Atwood's version might have made a good film.

This movie is about what can happen when religious nuts take over the country's government. People who are different are either killed or enslaved in one way or another. Let's see...we have murder and public display of anyone who isn't of the religion that took over....women who are fertile enslaved for religious higher-up's in the government...anyone who's different, and ISN'T killed enslaved in radioactive areas...makes you realize why people fight so hard against religion intruding into politics. Like the scholars from the future of this story who have a hard time believing it actually happened, despite hearing the story with their own ears, people nowadays don't believe that "people of God" in government would be so bad. Watch this movie and think on it. This is why there's a separation of church and state.