Review Roundup: 'The Handmaid's Tale' Is A Brilliant Adaptation Of A Dystopian Classic
The first three episodes of Hulu's highly anticipated television adaptation of Margaret Atwood's classic 1985 novel "The Handmaid's Tale" are available to stream today. The series' timing is impressive — as many critics have noted, there are more than a few parallels between Atwood's post-apocalyptic, patriarchal world and the world in 2017. But does "The Handmaid's Tale" live up to its source material, or are you better off heading to the library to reacquaint yourself with the written version? Here's what the reviews say.
The Series Stays Mostly True To The Book, With A Few Updates
Like the book, the series — starring Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes, and Alexis Bledel, and which begins streaming on April 26th — takes place in the former United States now known as Gilead. A surveillance state with Puritanical roots, the nation has responded with violence to plunging birth rates caused by environmental crisis. Fertile women such Moss's Offred and Bledel's Ofglen are captives, forced to bear children on behalf of the barren wives of the ruling class. For them, voluntary intimacy remains forbidden, as are books. Conversation is largely scripted. "Praise be" greets all news of the war's success; "under his eye" is a form of parting.
The book's pre-Gilead scenes, experienced in flashbacks, have been expanded, and are set in a recognizably contemporary America, complete with smartphones, Uber drivers, and athleisure. All of this only makes the contrast with Gilead more striking.
In Voiceover And Onscreen, Elizabeth Moss Delivers An Accomplished, Complex Performance
The book is told in the first person, with relatively little dialogue, so there is a lot of voice-over narration from Offred and time spent gazing into the face of Moss, an actress who can embody complicated, contradictory inner states in a single look. …
Moss is a brilliant muse, a fantastically unsettling alloy of fury and stillness; if this doesn't earn her the Emmy she was robbed of for her years on Mad Men, the voting Academy should sue itself for gross negligence.
Her eyes often framed here by a literally Puritan bonnet, Moss is an actress ready, willing and subtly eager for this dystopian nightmare set in a brutally nostalgic near future. Even when she's nonverbally registering the latest appalling turn of events, Moss activates the interior life of novelist Margaret Atwood's main character.
Director Reed Morano Creates An Impressively Coherent Dystopian World With An Eye For Detail
The blend of breathless terror is highlighted by Reed Morano, who directed all three episodes sent to critics. A former cinematographer, Reed has an impeccable eye that yields compositions of bracing precision. She rations out reds for the robes of the handmaids. She saves chilly blues for the wives. As much as possible, light comes only from direct sources and shafts of sunlight crash through murky scenes like unauthorized interlopers. Shooting Toronto-for-Boston lets Morano create a space that doesn't quite correspond with any city we know. It's familiar, but alien, just like the puritanical attire of the handmaids, whose bonnets and cloaks make them resemble invaders from another time. Depending on the moment, you might spot the influence of a Kubrick, Cuarón or Campion, but this is as original and confidently directed a set of early episodes as I've seen in years.
Despite The Dark Premise, 'The Handmaid's Tale' Contains Enough Humor To Keep It From Feeling Too Bleak
This is a dark story. That it's not oppressive is a testament to the deft adaptation and, especially, Ms. Moss's layered performance.
Offred is a captive. Nevertheless, she persists. She keeps a spark of self cupped in her hands. The series relies heavily on her narration, but not just for exposition. It's how we hear her true voice, defiant, spirited, even mordantly funny. Passing the hooded bodies of three men hanged by the government — a priest, a doctor and a gay man — she comments: "I think I heard that joke once. This wasn't the punch line."
Yet for all the horror of the show, I did not find watching it to be an entirely hopeless experience. The miniseries does not come with the novel's stress-relieving framing device — in which the Republic of Gilead is being studied as a historical relic, some hundreds of years still further into the future — but Offred, with her sardonic asides, her sense of humor, the disobedience in her soul, if not her manner, is bracing company: She's in this to survive.
[Slate]
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