(1990) I'd recommend instead reading the novel by Margaret Atwood (imagining the Reagan Republican revolution with its Christian-fundamentalist social agenda taken to an extreme) on which director Volker Schlondordff based his farfetched film of a dystopian near future, from screenwriter Harold Pinter's adaptation.

In the Republic of Gilead (formerly the USA) a rightwing authoritarian regime ("We are winning God's fight" by cleaning up the country and reestablishing reverence, respect, rule of law) has taken drastic measures to deal with the threat of human extinction. Toxic waste has so polluted the environment that only one out of every 100 women remains fertile.

In the snow, attempting to escape to the frontier, Kate (Natasha Richardson) with her husband and young daughter Jill are confronted at the border; after her husband is shot dead, she is taken captive without her child. Young women are separated into positive and negative categories of fecundity; those capable of reproduction are sent to the Red Center where they are trained to become handmaids to the upper classes while infertile females are shipped off to the toxic dumps of the colonies.

At the Red Center where traditional religious services (nuns are carted off screaming, "You can't make me break my vows") have been transformed into indoctrination programs, Kate joins other women being taught the new catechism for their role in life: they are to be fruitful and multiply as surrogates for the barren wives of the powerful patriarchy.

With the Bible's Old Testament as the sole Constitution for the theocratic government, a priest of the new political perspective declares in a sermon to the handmaids-to-be that God has punished most women of their generation with infertility for disobedience to his word - abortion, birth-control, genetic engineering; they as handmaids, however, are gifted with God's precious blessings of life's renewal. In group sessions to develop conformity of conduct the women are set upon one another, required to confess their past transgressions and acknowledge guilt.

With little back story for Kate, formerly a librarian, understanding who has privileges and who has lost them is left unclear. In the Red Center she meets Moira (Elizabeth McGovern), there for punishment of "gender treachery" (lesbianism).

Personally picked by Commander Fred (Robert Duvall) to enter his home as a handmaid, Kate becomes Offred (the third female chosen to produce an heir), wearing a crimson gown with veil; the Commander's wife Serena Joy (Faye Dunaway) always wears a blue outfit, as do all the wives of the aristocracy. Older women of the lower classes, donned in dun-colored uniforms, work as domestics.

The ritual for procreation (based on Rachel's handmaid Bilhah's being given to Jacob) is performed on a bed with the actual wife lying beneath the handmaid as the husband, after inserting himself, holds his spouse's hands while ejaculating into the surrogate.

Expressing a desire to get to know her better, occasionally the Commander in his private study, when he's not in the field fighting against the rebels (such as Baptists in the Appalachians), spends time playing Scrabble and cards with Offred. When he is away, she must return to the Red Center.

After three months without conception, the doctor, expressing an opinion that the Commander in all likelihood is sterile (only women, not men, are tested for fertility), offers to personally inseminate her. Though getting caught would result in getting her hanged, the physician assures Offred that women often resort to this subterfuge (no paternity tests) rather than face reassessment by their hosts (the wives are the harshest critics) after four months. Unexpectedly Serene Joy suggests another method, involving Nick (Aidan Quinn), the Commander's loyal military aid and chauffeur; in return she promises to look into what may have become of Jill.

Meanwhile, Moira (who had earlier taken revenge on the Red Center's director, Aunt Lydia) appears as an entertainer at a secret palace for the elite's males to enjoy otherwise forbidden pleasures, to which the Commander brings Offred as his "evening rental" (no wives allowed); she communicates to Kate that the Mayday resistance has a mission for the handmaid.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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