The Handmaid's Tale (film)
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| The Handmaid's Tale | |
|---|---|
 The Handmaid's Tale DVD cover |
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| Directed by | Volker Schlöndorff |
| Produced by | Daniel Wilson |
| Written by | Novel: Margaret Atwood Screenplay: Harold Pinter |
| Starring | Natasha Richardson Faye Dunaway Robert Duvall Aidan Quinn Elizabeth McGovern |
| Music by | Ryuichi Sakamoto |
| Cinematography | Igor Luther |
| Editing by | David Ray |
| Distributed by | Metro Goldwyn Mayer |
| Release date(s) | February 15, 1990 |
| Running time | 109 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | N/A |
| IMDb profile | |
The Handmaid's Tale is a 1990 film adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale (novel, Margaret Atwood) was directed by Volker Schlöndorff. It starred Natasha Richardson (Kate/Offred), Faye Dunaway (Serena Joy), Robert Duvall (The Commander, Fred), Aidan Quinn (Nick), and Elizabeth McGovern (Moira). The screenplay was written by Harold Pinter. The original music score was composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Taglines: See it... while it's still allowed.
- A haunting tale of sexuality in a country gone wrong.
[edit] Plot summary
In the near future, as war rages across the fictional Republic of Gilead and pollution has rendered 99 percent of the female population sterile, Kate (Offred in the novel, in which her real name as "Kate" is not specified), sees her husband killed and her daughter kidnapped while trying to escape across the border to Canada. Kate herself is transformed into a handmaid — a surrogate mother for one of the privileged but barren couples who run the country's fundamentalist regime. Although she resists being indoctrinated into the bizarre cult of the handmaids which mixes the Old Testament orthodoxy and misogynist cant with 12-step gospel and ritualized violence, Kate soon finds herself in the home of the Commander and his frosty wife, Serena Joy.
Forced to lie between Serena Joy's legs and be penetrated impersonally each month by the Commander, Kate longs for her vanished earlier life; she soon learns that since many of the nation's powerful men are as sterile as their wives, she will have to risk the punishment for fornication — death by hanging — in order to sleep with another man who can provide her with the pregnancy that has become her sole raison d'etre. When that other man turns out to be Nick, the Commander's sympathetic driver, Kate grows attached to him — and eventually pregnant with his child. Only the affiliation of her fellow handmaid, Ofglen, seems to offer any chance of giving her unborn child a life of freedom — or finding the daughter she already lost.
[edit] Filming locations
The scene where the hanging took place was filmed in front of Duke Chapel on the campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
[edit] External links
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