Before The Handmaid’s Tale Was A Hulu Series, It Was A Much Better Movie
Offred’s story hits harder in the era it was meant to be in.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where The Handmaid’s Tale is relevant again. The Hulu series began its adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name in 2017, and eight years later, the sixth and final season is premiering in just a few weeks, with a spinoff on the way.
But as timely as the story of Offred, a woman thrown into a dystopian religious dystopia, may be, it wasn’t written as a response to this era. It was written 40 years ago as a direct response to the rise of conservatism in the 1980s. In 1990, soon after the end of the Reagan years, the story got the contemporary adaptation it deserved. It may not have the production value of the Hulu series, but in hindsight, it’s better in countless ways.
A newly trained Kate, aka “Offred” (Natasha Richardson) with Serena Joy (Faye Dunaway).
The Handmaid’s Tale stars the late Natasha Richardson as Kate, a young woman captured while trying to cross the Canadian border with her husband and daughter. Instead, she’s forced to serve in the Christian fundamentalist nation of Gilead as a Handmaid — a surrogate fertile womb for high-powered couples to use due to a rise in infertility. She is trained in the Red Center to follow Gilead’s particular ways and witnesses what happens to those who act out: punishments varying from physical assault to hanging.
Eventually, she is given her assignment: she will serve as the Handmaid for Commander Fred (Robert Duvall) and his wife, Serena Joy (Faye Dunaway) who was a famous singer before the rise of Gilead. Kate — going by her new name, “Offred,” — suffers through being ritually assaulted by Fred during the monthly Ceremony, but soon finds the lines of the strict society blurring: Serena Joy, sensing that her husband may be unable to father a child, secretly arranges a rendezvous between Kate and Nick, the Commander’s driver. Kate falls for Nick and eventually becomes pregnant. But Serena Joy isn’t the only one bending the rules. Fred becomes fond of Kate and begins letting her explore his library at night, despite the fact reading is forbidden for women.
But when Fred’s advances go too far, Kate is forced to fight back, resulting in something that’s incredibly rare for dystopian stories like these: a happy ending. Kate may not be reunited with her family, but she is actually free, and that’s incredibly satisfying to watch.
Aunt Lydia (Victoria Tennant) explains declining birth rates to handmaids in training.
This movie departs from the TV show immensely: the white “wings” that made the cover of the original novel so evocative are replaced by (admittedly more telegenic) red sheer scarves, and the camera is forced to shy away from the gnarlier scenes of punishments, while the series isn’t bound by any ratings. But the biggest difference is the most fundamental. The movie has an ending.
Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale found success with audiences, but with each renewal of a new season, Offred’s happy ending kept getting postponed. After all, without her suffering, there’s no more story to tell. By keeping her story to 109 minutes, the movie may only show a limited look at Gilead, but it never overstays its welcome. We meet Kate, we learn of her plight, and we watch her truly triumph, something the series hasn’t been able to show in almost a decade.
It may not look as modern, but The Handmaid’s Tale film feels just as timely and certainly more hopeful than its television counterpart. You don’t always need six seasons to tell an affecting story of a complex fictional culture. Sometimes, you just need to let the horrifying day-to-day of the original book speak for itself.
