The Handmaid's Tale

Taut, powerful, brilliantly lit, The Handmaid's Tale casts a spell, even as it spells out its dire warning. [09 Mar 1990, p.20]

With its devilish attention to polite little touches, its abundant bitchiness, its decrying of the Handmaids' oppression along with its tacit celebration of their fecundity, The Handmaid's Tale is a shrewd if preposterous cautionary tale that strikes a wide range of resonant chords. Read full review

If there can be a best-selling novel with a cult following, Margaret Atwood's feminist-futuristic The Handmaid's Tale qualifies. I'm not sure if the screen version has the stuff to become a cult movie - but if so, credit timeliness, visual style and a few performances. Most of all, timeliness. [07 Mar 1990, p.4D]

Dutifully bleak, suitably oppressive, the film delivers Atwood's desolate who-owns-our-bodies? indictment with intelligence and probity. [09 Mar 1990, p.25p]

As a film, The Handmaid's Tale, effectively compressed in Pinter's terse screenplay and heightened by Schldondorff's Teutonic thriller techniques, both subtracts from and adds to Atwood's novel, while scrupulously preserving its interior paradox. [09 Mar 1990]

There is no denying the power of The Handmaid's Tale. It's a scary exaggeration of a world that many people claim they want to build. It should be required viewing for anyone who advocates a fundamentalist point of view of any kind. [09 Mar 1990]

Despite its shortcomings, however, the movie is often stimulating in a way that movies generally aren't. A dark, mirthless satire set in the near future, the film keeps your attention by holding a warped mirror up to our own time. [19 Mar 1990, p.C1]

Despite its familiarity, Tale is well-staged and well-acted. Richardson makes Kate a real person, and her tale is suspenseful to the end. [16 Mar 1990, p.R07]

The overall direction of the movie may be strongly polemical, but its real strength comes from the resonance of a hundred subtle moments. [04 May 1990, p.3F]

Harold Pinter's screenplay adds needless touches of melodrama to Margaret Atwood's original novel, but the performances have a lot of conviction, and the story deals with important issues. [16 Mar 1990, p.10]

The several ideas whizzing about in this story are frankly fascinating, and though there are times when the film seems sadly out of date, the film has a real pull to it. [16 Mar 1990, p.G5]

Though helmer Volker Schlondorff succeeds in painting the bleakness of this extrapolated future, he fails to create a strong and persistent connection with the heroine’s plight. Read full review

It's a beautifully austere piece of work -- it's rare to see a film these days that's as carefully designed as this one. But the design hasn't been given enough human contours. It's as if the film makers had forgotten the raging emotions that all that design and austerity were supposed to repress. [07 Mar 1990, p.F1]

Though the movie version of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale isn't as powerful as its source material, there are enough stark, unnerving images here to give the effort an Orwellian potency all its own. [17 Mar 1990, p.1D]

At the end of the movie we are conscious of large themes and deep thoughts, and of good intentions drifting out of focus. Read full review

The finale isn't quite as chillingly nerve-wracking as one would hope. Schloendorff, who also made The Tin Drum, directs with a uniform dullness that creates little sense of suspense. In replaying the Atwood novel, he and Pinter ultimately fail to create a significant timbre of their own to make the transmogrification truly effective. Read full review

If the movie stands between good old messy, toxic America and depraved Gilead, blessed be it. But alas, it's unlikely to appeal to the converted, much less bona fide brimstone eaters. And one can't help but wonder why a woman didn't direct this movie about women being dominated by men. Read full review

The Handmaid’s Tale is watchable, but it’s also paranoid poppycock — just like the book. Read full review

Comes across as a TV movie and overall, a disappointment - a high calibre cast and concept completely squandered. Read full review

Sadly, the faults in the film lie in Harold Pinter's uncharacteristically bland script, and often woefully inadequate design and direction: the latter often missing opportunities in key scenes, the former full of rather tacky and silly uniforms, symbols, vehicles, and particularly crass watchtowers. Read full review

The heavy-handed direction by Volker Schlondorff doesn't help to make the movie convincing or dramatically effective. [16 Mar 1990, p.54]

Pinter's adaptation is uninspired, and this half-heartedness, combined with Schlondorff's heavy-handedness, serves to crush Atwood's feminist concerns through overkill and to turn a provocative novel into a screen polemic that invites no discussion. This isn't filmmaking; it's haranguing by celluloid. Read full review

Hollywood has again turned a challenging book into negligible cinema. Forget the $13 million budget and the reputations involved. This Handmaid’s Tale is merely a piss-poor rehash of The Stepford Wives with delusions of grandeur. Read full review

The film is madly, compulsively overcontrolled, from its funereal pacing to its pristine red, white and blue color scheme; those moments when it loses its dignity are irresistibly comic, and in this grim context, infinitely precious.[16 Mar 1990, p.B]