Margaret Atwood's future is bleak. The world has deteriorated into a Combination of poisoned air and water and women are 99% infertile. The men in charge have developed an elaborate system for selecting those still able to produce children. Kate (Natasha Richardson) is captured attempting to escape to Canada and is forced to become a handmaiden, as in the Old Testament. The commander (Robert Duvall), is married to Serena (Faye Dunaway), who is too old to have children, and so Kate becomes a surrogate. A bizarre ritual follows, with the commander doing the deed with the handmaid resting between Serena's legs. The government has a school of sorts, where the women are brainwashed with constant religious and patriotic messages. The story is strongly influenced by both Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World. 1984 was written in 1948, and Atwood's book in 1985. Even though they have similar themes, Handmaid stands out as an accurate look at our current situation. The right to privacy has become a sick joke and we are sedated by reality television, with its mastermind now in charge. A truly frightening movie , one perfectly appropriate for our current times.

This is a nightmare vision of the future. It seems 1 out of every 100 women is fertile (for some reason). The ones who aren't perform slave labor. The ones that are are "sold" off to rich families where they have sex with the husband to produce a baby. Kate (the late and missed Natasha Richardson) is one such servant to Serena Joy (Faye Dunaway) and her husband the Commander (Robert Duvall). Kate wants out--but it seems there's no way.The synopsis only scratches the surface of a VERY dark and disturbing movie. It slowly shows how women are treated and used and it just gets more horrifying as it unfolds. The parallels to Hitler's Nazi Germany are fairly obvious but here we have barren women instead of Jews and gays. The good acting by everybody makes this hard to shake off. Aidan Quinn (as Nick) and Duvall are OK; Victoria Tennant is chilling as a leader of the camps; Elizabeth McGovern is just great as a fellow prisoner who befriends Kate; Dunaway is also very good in her role. Best of all is Richardson. This couldn't have been an easy role but she pulls it off beautifully. She died at far too young an age. This is basically an unknown movie and it's easy to see why--it's far too dark and disturbing for a general audience. However the ending is (sort of) uplifting (and changed from the book). Grim, dark and depressing. View it at your own risk. The ceremony sequences are almost impossible to watch and shocked the hell out of me the first time I saw this.

thoroughly abject, plain Jane production design and vanilla mush of a story. The premise of this lunatic, virginity-obsessed oligarchy that America has somehow become is merely unexplored window-dressing to a soporific and pedestrian story arc. All in all this film stands as an anti-adaptation of the source material. Hard to believe Volker Schlondorff was a participant in turning this one out. Aside from consideration of this doleful picture it is rather amusing to notice that to a comment every positive review of this film is a transparent excuse for righteous soapboxing against misogynism in society rather than the film per se.

Margaret Atwood's acclaimed novel, adapted for the screen and turned into a high-minded but posed, uncomfortable human drama, despite an expert cast. Taking place in the soulless distant future, all young women have been turned into child-breeders for wealthy, infertile couples, with Nastasha Richardson assigned to nightmarish twosome Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway. Elizabeth McGovern plays a lesbian who hopes to make a break for it (every totalitarian society should have one). Certainly watchable, though an icy cold presentation which promises to be much more than it is. Richardson doesn't flash a hint of her feisty personality, though McGovern is very good and Duvall does what he can with a terrible role. ** from ****