The Handmaid's Tale (tv version, season 1)
I had a very busy week, but before that managed to finish the first season of The Handmaid's Tale. Now, when it comes to Margaret Atwood books, I must confess that firstly, I started with The Robber Bride, not The Handmaid's Tale, and secondly, while I did watch the Volker Schlöndorff movie version of the later, I still haven't gotten around to reading it. (But want to now.) So I can't speak to the faithfulness, or lack thereof, of the tv version in terms of the book, though the comparison to the Schlöndorff film (which starred Natasha Richardson as Offred - her true name, June, wasn't mentioned in the movie, at least that's what I recall) is instructive. Not least because Schlöndorf comes across as very static, even taking the different format (movie vs tv season) into account; it's not just that Elizabeth Moss is the more expressive actress - and Offred/June needs to be, since due to her situation she often has to react, not act, or stay silent, full stop - but also because the tv captures the dark humor despite the terrible circumstances that I've found in all the Atwood novels I did read.
(Also, the voice over in the tv version feels far more essential - it's June's unfiltered voice which can rarely be expressed in the present day dialogue and shows the sense of self in her is not extinguished, that it's her way of resisting before she finds additional means. Penchant for black humor included.)
Mind you, another difference is in me as the beholder. Back in the day, I didn't believe in Schlöndorff's take on Gilead as a dystopia that could happen, not the way, say, that Orwell's 1984 worked on me. Fast forward a few decades, and headlines from the current day US (though also from other countries, from Brazil to Poland), and I'm sitting here thinking: Yep. That's exactly what the hard right wants, and what it's going to get if we don't all work to save democracy. I can believe now, as I couldn't then, when I was much younger, that all progress could be unmantled, that much of the population would either go along with it or be terrified into doing so. MAGA: Make America Gilead Again. These days? I fear it's all too likely.
With this emotional background, it also strikes me that June/Offred's loathing for the Commander and Serena Joy feels far more visceral. There is in general a rage in the tv version (btw, first season only, that's all I've seen, and since the second one takes the story past the oiginal novel from what I've heard, comparing it to the movie would be pointless anyway) that wasn't in the, again, static, movie. Possibly because Schlöndorf didn't believe it could happen? His Gilead was a dystopia viewed from a distance, the Commander as played by Robert Duvall both pathetic and actually lonely while Serena Joy was uiniformly middleaged spite. The tv version's couple are younger and played by younger actors; tv's Serena Joy manages to be both a more complex and more enraging character, the tv show's primary conservative woman, a true believer who is one of the chief (deliberate) architects of the horror she now finds herself trapped in as well (though her position is i more privileged than the hellish one she helped manufacturing for most of the other women) , while the tv Commander, as opposed to Duvall from Schlöndorf, gets (justly) zilch narrative sympathy, pathetic in a different sense (of the two, it's Serena Joy who is capable of actual emotion while the Commander is just play-acting to feel better about himself).
The show keeps using flashbacks to the pre-Gilead world, to some key points in the change from present day US to dystopian theocracy, to June and her friend Moira at the reeducation center, etc., eventually flashbacks not from June's pov but also those of other characters (Serena Joy, Luke, Nick) which help the "this is just five minutes into the future" feeling and of course flash out the characters. It also keeps the audience from adjusting to and normalizing Gilead. Mind you, the series also goes for the stylized aesthetic and cinematic shots in brutal scenes (such as an execution), but it a way that to me heightened the disturbing feeling. The scenes where compassion and courage win, by contrast, always feel intimate, even when they're similarly stylized (such as one particular scene n the finale). Given that the very premise of the story contains constant rape (since none of the Handmaids is able to refuse having sex), it's worth pointing out that the show goes out of its way to make the scenes in question non-exploitative (we're in the pov of the women throughout, and the way June often only sees parts of the Commander's body and Serena Joy's face above her conveys how brutal this is without physical force).
Since it's a tv show, the supporting cast can come to the fore in a way it couldn't in a movie version; there are episodes in which other characters take central stage, like Moira (I recognized the actress from Orange is the New Black), Emily/Offglen or as mentioned Serena Joy. Ann Dowd as "Aunt" Lydia manages to be both terrifying and weirdly compelling, the type of torturer who really buys into the "but I'm doing this for your own good!" excuse, a headmistress gone too far. I'm not sure I always buy into the world building (for example: the show dispenses with Atwood's premise of Gilead as a white supremacy state which otoh allows them to use poc actors but otoh feels unlikely as something developing from the current day extreme right), and I note with a weary "well, that's optimistic at least" amusement that in this 'verse, the Euro outlives the US, but it really is very compelling tv, and I'm glad I watched it.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1341553.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
(Also, the voice over in the tv version feels far more essential - it's June's unfiltered voice which can rarely be expressed in the present day dialogue and shows the sense of self in her is not extinguished, that it's her way of resisting before she finds additional means. Penchant for black humor included.)
Mind you, another difference is in me as the beholder. Back in the day, I didn't believe in Schlöndorff's take on Gilead as a dystopia that could happen, not the way, say, that Orwell's 1984 worked on me. Fast forward a few decades, and headlines from the current day US (though also from other countries, from Brazil to Poland), and I'm sitting here thinking: Yep. That's exactly what the hard right wants, and what it's going to get if we don't all work to save democracy. I can believe now, as I couldn't then, when I was much younger, that all progress could be unmantled, that much of the population would either go along with it or be terrified into doing so. MAGA: Make America Gilead Again. These days? I fear it's all too likely.
With this emotional background, it also strikes me that June/Offred's loathing for the Commander and Serena Joy feels far more visceral. There is in general a rage in the tv version (btw, first season only, that's all I've seen, and since the second one takes the story past the oiginal novel from what I've heard, comparing it to the movie would be pointless anyway) that wasn't in the, again, static, movie. Possibly because Schlöndorf didn't believe it could happen? His Gilead was a dystopia viewed from a distance, the Commander as played by Robert Duvall both pathetic and actually lonely while Serena Joy was uiniformly middleaged spite. The tv version's couple are younger and played by younger actors; tv's Serena Joy manages to be both a more complex and more enraging character, the tv show's primary conservative woman, a true believer who is one of the chief (deliberate) architects of the horror she now finds herself trapped in as well (though her position is i more privileged than the hellish one she helped manufacturing for most of the other women) , while the tv Commander, as opposed to Duvall from Schlöndorf, gets (justly) zilch narrative sympathy, pathetic in a different sense (of the two, it's Serena Joy who is capable of actual emotion while the Commander is just play-acting to feel better about himself).
The show keeps using flashbacks to the pre-Gilead world, to some key points in the change from present day US to dystopian theocracy, to June and her friend Moira at the reeducation center, etc., eventually flashbacks not from June's pov but also those of other characters (Serena Joy, Luke, Nick) which help the "this is just five minutes into the future" feeling and of course flash out the characters. It also keeps the audience from adjusting to and normalizing Gilead. Mind you, the series also goes for the stylized aesthetic and cinematic shots in brutal scenes (such as an execution), but it a way that to me heightened the disturbing feeling. The scenes where compassion and courage win, by contrast, always feel intimate, even when they're similarly stylized (such as one particular scene n the finale). Given that the very premise of the story contains constant rape (since none of the Handmaids is able to refuse having sex), it's worth pointing out that the show goes out of its way to make the scenes in question non-exploitative (we're in the pov of the women throughout, and the way June often only sees parts of the Commander's body and Serena Joy's face above her conveys how brutal this is without physical force).
Since it's a tv show, the supporting cast can come to the fore in a way it couldn't in a movie version; there are episodes in which other characters take central stage, like Moira (I recognized the actress from Orange is the New Black), Emily/Offglen or as mentioned Serena Joy. Ann Dowd as "Aunt" Lydia manages to be both terrifying and weirdly compelling, the type of torturer who really buys into the "but I'm doing this for your own good!" excuse, a headmistress gone too far. I'm not sure I always buy into the world building (for example: the show dispenses with Atwood's premise of Gilead as a white supremacy state which otoh allows them to use poc actors but otoh feels unlikely as something developing from the current day extreme right), and I note with a weary "well, that's optimistic at least" amusement that in this 'verse, the Euro outlives the US, but it really is very compelling tv, and I'm glad I watched it.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1341553.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.