The Handmaid's Tale (film)

1990 film by Volker Schlöndorff

The Handmaid's Tale is a 1990 dystopian film adapted from Canadian author Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel of the same name. Directed by Volker Schlöndorff, the film stars Natasha Richardson (Offred), Faye Dunaway (Serena Joy), Robert Duvall (The Commander), Aidan Quinn (Nick), and Elizabeth McGovern (Moira). The screenplay was written by playwright Harold Pinter. It is the first filmed adaptation of the novel, succeeded by the Hulu television series which began streaming in 2017. The film adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale faced numerous challenges in its development, with screenwriter Harold Pinter expressing dissatisfaction with the final product due to significant alterations from his original script. Pinter had contributed only part of the screenplay and ultimately gave the director and author carte blanche to make changes. He tried to have his name removed from the credits but was unsuccessful. The film's reception was mixed, with an approval rating of 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, and critics expressing uncertainty about the movie's message and themes.

In the near future, war rages across the Republic of Gilead (formerly the United States of America) and pollution has rendered 99% of the population sterile. Kate is a woman who attempts to emigrate to Canada with her husband Luke and daughter Jill. As they attempt to cross the border by foot on a dirt road, the Gilead Border Guard orders them to turn back or they will open fire. Luke draws their fire, telling Kate to run, and is shot. Kate is captured, while Jill wanders off into the back country, confused and unaccompanied. The authorities take Kate to a training facility with several other women, where the women are trained to become Handmaids, who are concubines for the privileged but barren couples who run the country's religious fundamentalist regime. Although she resists indoctrination into the cult of the Handmaids, which mixes Old Testament orthodoxy with scripted group chanting and ritualized violence, Kate is soon assigned to the home of "the Commander" (Fred) and his cold, inflexible wife, Serena Joy. There she is named "Offred" ("of Fred"). Her role as the Commander's latest concubine is emotionless, as she lies between Serena Joy's legs while the Commander rapes her, both of them hoping that she will bear them a child. Kate continually longs for her earlier life, but nightmares of her husband's death and her daughter's disappearance haunt her. A doctor explains that many of Gilead's male leaders are as sterile as their wives. Desperately wanting a baby, Serena Joy persuades Kate to risk the punishment for fornication (death by hanging) in order to be fertilized by another man who may impregnate her and consequently spare her life. When Kate agrees to this, Serena Joy informs Kate that her daughter Jill is alive, and provides a recent photograph of her living in another Commander's household, but tells Kate she can never see her daughter. The Commander also tries to get closer to Kate, sensing that if she enjoyed herself more she would become a better handmaid. Exploiting Kate's background as a librarian, he gets her hard to obtain items and allows her into his private library. However, during a night out, the Commander has sex with Kate in an unauthorized manner. The other man selected by Serena Joy turns out to be Nick, the Commander's sympathetic chauffeur. Kate grows attached to Nick and eventually becomes pregnant with his child. Kate ultimately kills the Commander, and a police unit then arrives to take her away. Believing the policemen are members of the Eyes, the government's secret police, she realizes that they are soldiers from the resistance movement (Mayday), of which Nick is also a part. Kate then flees with them, parting from Nick in an emotional scene. Now free once again and wearing non uniform clothes, but facing an uncertain future, a pregnant Kate is living by herself in a trailer while receiving intelligence reports from the rebels. Wondering if — and hoping that — she and Nick will be reunited, she resolves — with the rebels' help — to find her daughter.

According to Steven H. Gale, in his book Sharp Cut, "the final cut of The Handmaid's Tale is less a result of Pinter's script than any of his other films. He contributed only part of the screenplay: reportedly he 'abandoned writing the screenplay from exhaustion.' Although he tried to have his name removed from the credits because he was so displeased with the movie (in 1994 he told me that this was due to the great divergences from his script that occur in the movie), his name remains as screenwriter". Gale observes further that "while the film was being shot, director Volker Schlöndorff", who had replaced the original director Karel Reisz, "called Pinter and asked for some changes in the script"; however, "Pinter recall[ed] being very tired at the time, and he suggested that Schlöndorff contact Atwood about the rewrites. He essentially gave the director and author carte blanche to accept whatever changes that she wanted to institute, for, as he reasoned, 'I didn't think an author would want to fuck up her own work.' As it turned out, not only did Atwood make changes, but so did many others who were involved in the shoot". he adds: "Most notably The Handmaid's Tale, which he considered so much altered that he has refused to allow the script to be published, and The Remains of the Day, which he refused to allow his name to be attached to for the same reason " (84n3).

Christopher C. Hudgins discusses further details about why "Pinter elected not to publish three of his completed filmscripts, The Handmaid's Tale, The Remains of the Day and Lolita," all of which Hudgins considers "masterful filmscripts" of "demonstrable superiority to the shooting scripts that were eventually used to make the films"; fortunately ("We can thank our various lucky stars"), he says, "these Pinter filmscripts are now available not only in private collections but also in the Pinter Archive at the British Library." In this essay, which he first presented as a paper at the 10th Europe Theatre Prize symposium, Pinter: Passion, Poetry, Politics, held in Turin, Italy, in March 2006, Hudgins "examin[es] all three unpublished filmscripts in conjunction with one another" and "provides several interesting insights about Pinter's adaptation process".

The scene where the hanging occurred was filmed in front of Duke Chapel on the campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Several scenes were filmed at Saint Mary's School in Raleigh, North Carolina. ('The Staircase' was used for this film and the Patterson house as a location)

Rotten Tomatoes reports that 7 of the 23 counted critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating was 4.9/10 and an approval rating of 30%. Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and wrote that he was "not sure exactly what the movie is saying" and that by "the end of the movie we are conscious of large themes and deep thoughts, and of good intentions drifting out of focus." Owen Gleiberman, writing for Entertainment Weekly, gave the film a "C−" grade and commented that "visually, it's quite striking", but that it is "paranoid poppycock — just like the book". John Simon of the National Review called The Handmaid's Tale "inept and annoying".

Billington, Michael. Harold Pinter. London: Faber and Faber, 2007. (13). Updated 2nd ed. of The Life and Work of Harold Pinter. 1996. London: Faber and Faber, 1997. (10). Print. Gale, Steven H. Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter's Screenplays and the Artistic Process. Lexington, KY: The UP of Kentucky, 2003. (10). (13). Print. –––, ed. The Films of Harold Pinter. Albany: SUNY P, 2001. Print. [A collection of essays; does not include an essay on The Handmaid's Tale; mentions it on 1, 2, 84n3, 125.] Hudgins, Christopher C. "Three Unpublished Harold Pinter Filmscripts: The Handmaid's Tale, The Remains of the Day, Lolita." The Pinter Review: Nobel Prize / Europe Theatre Prize Volume: 2005–2008. Ed. Francis Gillen with Steven H. Gale. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 2008. 132–39. (hardcover). (softcover). Print. Johnson, Brian D. "Uphill Battle: Handmaid's Hard Times." Maclean's 26 Feb. 1990. Print. Portman, Jamie (CanWest News Service). "Not the Tale of a Handmaid: Natasha Richardson Has Led an Outspoken Career". Canada. com. CanWest News Service, 18 Mar. 2009. Web. 24 Mar. 2009.