Where 1990’s The Handmaid’s Tale went horribly… | Little White Lies

Where 1990’s The Handmaid’s Tale went hor­ri­bly wrong

08 Feb 2020

Words by Brian Thompson

Group of women in red robes, standing together.
Group of women in red robes, standing together.
This large­ly for­got­ten adap­ta­tion of Mar­garet Atwood’s nov­el fatal­ly mis­un­der­stands the female perspective.

Upon its release in 1990, Volk­er Schlöndorff’s film adap­ta­tion of Mar­garet Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale’ was wide­ly dis­missed by crit­ics. These days, it’s a large­ly for­got­ten rel­ic, dif­fi­cult to track down even in the age of lim­it­less stream­ing and over­shad­owed by the huge­ly suc­cess­ful Hulu series. As the film’s 30th anniver­sary approach­es, it’s tempt­ing to retrace the steps of this doomed retelling, explor­ing where it went wrong and how the very same source mate­r­i­al was used to cre­ate one of the most well-regard­ed TV shows in recent memory.

So, why didn’t it con­nect with audi­ences? Well, con­text is key, and it’s easy to see how this grue­some tale would catch on in the cur­rent glob­al cli­mate. Three decades lat­er, we live in an era of increas­ing­ly bla­tant author­i­tar­i­an­ism. Audi­ences turn to dystopi­an sto­ry­telling because, at their most affect­ing, they can work through society’s fail­ings, serve as a hope­ful reminder of the resilience of the human will, help to nav­i­gate the tur­bu­lent waters of social change, or (at the very least) dis­tract us with the sheer enter­tain­ment fac­tor a good thrill can provide.

But that cer­tain­ly isn’t any­thing new. Oppres­sion wasn’t breathed into exis­tence some­where between 1990 and 2017, when the series pre­miered. Hell, just a hand­ful of years pri­or, crit­ics and audi­ences both were much kinder to Michael Radford’s strik­ing­ly bleak adap­ta­tion of Nine­teen Eighty-Four, even though George Orwell’s night­mar­ish por­trait of the eas­i­ly imag­ined tyran­ni­cal future was clear­ly a direct influ­ence on Atwood’s novel.

Much of the film’s fail­ings land on the shoul­ders of its shod­di­ly assem­bled pro­duc­tion team. Schlön­dorff and screen­writer Harold Pin­ter had absolute­ly no busi­ness telling this sto­ry. Through­out its run­time, it becomes increas­ing­ly clear that there were no women even giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to offer input at any step of the process. The Handmaid’s Tale suf­fers from a com­plete mis­un­der­stand­ing of – and wil­ful apa­thy towards – the female per­spec­tive. Even Offred’s inter­nal mono­logue was entire­ly gut­ted, and the audi­ence is left to work out on their own who she is as a cen­tral char­ac­ter, rather than being shown why we’re meant to iden­ti­fy with her plight.

Cinecom Pic­tures were try­ing to cash in on a book-of-the-moment with an adap­ta­tion that lacked the care and atten­tion nec­es­sary for bit­ing satire – and audi­ences saw right through it. A com­plete com­mer­cial fail­ure, the film didn’t make back half of its bud­get. Film­go­ers were too busy see­ing House Par­ty or Joe Ver­sus the Vol­cano or, more like­ly, The Hunt for Red Octo­ber for a third time. It’s no sur­prise that the stu­dio would shut its doors after fil­ing for bank­rupt­cy the fol­low­ing year, a swift fall from its mid-’80s heyday.

Sim­ply put, The Handmaid’s Tale is just plain lazy. Schlön­dorff squan­ders his star cast (Natasha Richard­son, Faye Dun­away, Robert Duvall) through a dry, almost sur­gi­cal approach that’s devoid of emo­tion. The film is more con­cerned with deliv­er­ing cheap thrills than a nuanced dis­sec­tion of gen­der pol­i­tics, turn­ing an inspired fable into lit­tle more than drug­store pulp. The life­less script ignores the why of it all. It doesn’t help that the over­bear­ing score seems, at times, to mim­ic that of The Ter­mi­na­tor. What’s worse is that it doesn’t even clear the incred­i­bly low bar it sets for itself. Neutered to the point of bore­dom, the result is the worst of both camps, fail­ing to flour­ish on either an enter­tain­ment or insight­ful level.

Sure, Atwood’s alle­go­ry shines through at times, as nuggets of per­cep­tion shim­mer from beneath the muck and mire. In a manœu­vre that was sure­ly born more of neces­si­ty than of inge­nu­ity, its set­ting feels a bit more firm­ly teth­ered to the present than the series, due in part to its aes­thet­ic min­i­mal­ism. It isn’t dif­fi­cult to accept this dooms­day prophe­cy, as its world seems only a few shades away from our own, mak­ing the graph­ic scenes all the more uncomfortable.

How­ev­er, the tonal heft is always under­cut by how lit­tle it seems to think of itself. Schlön­dorff nev­er takes the sto­ry seri­ous­ly, and so the murky atmos­phere dis­rupts any chance it has at land­ing its point. The Hulu series arguably falls into the hor­ror genre, where­as this adap­ta­tion can’t quite decide what tone it’s going for. At times it’s almost twee (hope­ful, even), for­feit­ing the moments that should oth­er­wise be excru­ci­at­ing to watch. There’s absolute­ly no urgency what­so­ev­er, so the stakes feel so tedious­ly low, which is a sure­fire way to smoth­er a dystopi­an narrative.

Per­haps this iter­a­tion of Atwood’s nov­el was nev­er going to land. This isn’t the kind of para­ble that can be neat­ly wrapped up in 109 min­utes and, more impor­tant­ly, this awk­ward film is a mis­guid­ed attempt that nev­er does the source mate­r­i­al any jus­tice. Schlön­dorff doesn’t touch on any of the novel’s deep­er impli­ca­tions until the final scenes, and, even then, they are hur­ried­ly thrown togeth­er and only exam­ined on a slap­dash, sur­face level.

The fact that the series would go on to ful­ly flesh out this world in a way that would even sur­pass the book makes this adap­ta­tion all the more dis­ap­point­ing in hind­sight. Ulti­mate­ly, 1990’s The Handmaid’s Tale miss­es near­ly all of the story’s poten­cy, feel­ing more like a Spar­knotes recap of the nov­el, with­out any of the the­mat­ic insights.

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