The Handmaid's Tale
by Volker Schl?ndorff
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DVD details
Actor: Aidan Quinn, Elizabeth McGovern, Faye Dunaway, Natasha Richardson, Victoria TennantDirector: Volker Schl?ndorff
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 109 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-12-11
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of The Handmaid's Tale
DVD Review: Thought-provoking,disturbing.
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie grips you and doesn't let go. Very disturbing.....It is a movie about a society in the future where infertility is the norm and fertility is a prized possession which is used to provide offspring to the members of an elite group of people/government. Women who are fertile are used as "handmaids" or as vessels to provide the offspring....once their babies are born, they are taken from them and given to the elite members of society. Haunting!!DVD Review: Great Story - Fabulous Storyline
Summary: 4 Stars
I heard some friends talking about some other movie that reminded me of something I saw 18 years ago . . . on PBS no less. The "Handmaid's Tale" - it's rather "1984" meets "Code 46." And what better cast could you ask for - Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway, Aidan Quinn (very young looking!) - it's totally bizarre how a failed country or maybe race attempts to turn itself around with ridiculous freedom robbing rules and procedures . . . Hats off to all Bureaucrats! Definately worth a watch.DVD Review: The Handmaid's Tale
Summary: 5 Stars
Margaret Atwood's prophetic novel-- so realistic it's scary. An example of what could happen if the religious right were turned loose with power.DVD Review: The book was better, but not a bad movie
Summary: 4 Stars
I would totally recommend reading the book that this movie is based on. It was a wonderful book and I read it once as a teenager and once again as an adult. The movie captures the book OK, about average for movies based on books. My mother watched it with me and said it was weird but good enough to watch. DVD Review: How do you survive when you do not own yourself?
Summary: 4 Stars
"Pollution has caused sterility in 99% of the women. A war has overturned the government, and fertile women are deprived of their reproductive rights. Owned by the wives of the ruling men, they are forced to become "handmaids". How do you survive when all women are treated as chattel, segregated as a wife or a whore... and you have been classed as the latter?"
Description of The Handmaid's Tale
With "cool eroticism, intelligence and intensity" (Playboy), this eerie futuristic thriller,based on Margaret Atwood's controversial and critically acclaimed best-selling novel, is filled with "large themes and deep thoughts" (Roger Ebert). Boasting a phenomenal cast, including Natasha Richardson (Nell) and Oscar(r) winners* Faye Dunaway (Network) and Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies), this film "dazzles with its ingenuity and shocks with its outrageousness" (WNCN Radio)! In the not-so-distant future, strong-willed and beautiful Kate (Richardson) possesses a precious commodity that most women have lost and most men want to control fertility. Forced into a brain-washing boot camp that turns fertile women into surrogate mothers for social-elite men and their infertile wives, Kate thinks she's made out well when she's assigned to an eminent partyleader (Duvall). But when she learns that he's sterile, she's faced with the impossible choice: produce him an heir or die! *Dunaway: Actress, Network (1976); Duvall: Actor, Tender Mercies (1983)Set in a time when a buildup of toxic chemicals has made most people sterile, Volker Schlondorff's film offers a disturbing view of a society under martial law in which fertile women are captured and made into handmaids to bear children for rich and infertile matrons. The film unfolds from the eyes of newly converted handmaid Kate (Natasha Richardson). She is trapped in this mysogynistic society which both deifies these fertile women as prized possessions and condemns them as whores. Throughout the story Kate has to cope with the jealousy of the woman she serves (Faye Dunaway), the advances of her sleazy military husband (the Commander, played by Robert Duvall), and the loss of her daughter, who has been shuttled off to a similarly aristocratic setting. She also falls in love with one of the Commander's security guards (Aidan Quinn), who sympathizes with her plight and potentially offers her a way out. Throughout The Handmaid's Tale, issues of feminism, abortion rights, male dominance, and conservative religious politics all come under fire. Some may view the film itself as antifemale considering its concepts, but it is quite the opposite. Instead it shows how only through solidarity can women bring down an overriding patriarchical mindset. The film, which works from Harold Pinter's screenplay adaption of Margaret Atwood's novel, features strong performances from those mentioned as well as Elizabeth McGovern and Victoria Tennant. --Bryan Reesman
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