‘Handmaid’s Tale’ worth viewer’s labor
handmaids, child-bearing slaves for married couples. Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is assigned as the handmaid of Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes), a commander in the Gilead. Named June Osborne in her previous life, Offred is separated from her daughter Hannah (Jordana Blake), conceived with Luke (O-T Fagbenie), who was still married but separated when they first met, making June/Offred a wanton woman.
The early episodes of the new season offer origin stories about several of the major female characters, including June when she was a young woman who is deemed by the nascent repressive order to be an unfit mother because she has a career. Emily, now Ofglen (Alexis Bledel), had a career in academia before she was forced to become a handmaid. Her “crime” was that she is a lesbian, deemed a “gender traitor” by the state. Were she not able to bear children, she would have been executed.
The series’ use of flashbacks is important beyond being useful in establishing the backstories of major characters: They are a not-so-subtle reminder that the handmaids were women leading useful lives, pursuing fulfillment in ways we would consider admirable. Even Serena Joy Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski) had the freedom to be an outspoken advocate of women playing subservient roles to their husbands. Now, she is resentful toward Offred, who is pregnant but remains defiant, bitter and determined. She may utter the prescribed phraseology for citizens of Gilead — “praise be,” “under his eye” “blessed day” — but she is engaged in a prolonged force of wills with “Aunt” Lydia (Ann Dowd), one of the older women charged with keeping the handmaids in line. They are all called Aunts, while women who work as household servants for Gilead commanders, such as Waterford, are called Marthas.
But here’s the other thing about the flashbacks: They’re barely flashbacks at all. In so many other ways, through careful attention to details, the multilayered, richly populous story unfolds almost entirely in present tense, but for the formalized establishment of the Gilead’s totalitarianism.
It isn’t unusual for a dystopian tale to use elements of the present to more deeply engage us with the future. But in the case of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the focus is on the very near future, as near perhaps as tomorrow, and that only enhances the series.
Once again, the performances are astounding. And once again, the most astounding is Emmy winner Moss. It’s not just how perfectly she delivers dialogue to communicate the roil of emotions she feels as she tries to escape not just the servitude of being a handmaid, but also the oppressiveness of patriarchal dominance. She is equally powerful in silence. Watch her face as she reacts to degradation and insult from every corner — you don’t need to hear her voice to know that she is carrying on an internal debate about whether she should lash out at her oppressors, as she is so justified in doing at any given moment, or feign acquiescence in order to survive to fight that storied other day.
The rest of the cast is extraordinary. Bledel, Dowd, Strahovski, Samira Wiley as Moira, a lesbian who accepts a job in a state-run brothel to avoid worse punishment for being a “gender traitor,” and Madeline Brewer as Janine, whose eye was removed as punishment — they all contribute to a tour de force of exemplary female performances. To add to the sweep, Cherry Jones shows up as June’s activist mother, and Marisa Tomei has a brief but powerfully disturbing guest role.
The men don’t have much to do, but, that said, Fiennes and Max Minghella, the driver who is embedded in the Waterford household to spy on the commander, are, well, useful. And I mean that in a very complimentary way.
Creator Bruce Miller clearly understands, loves and respects not only Atwood’s complicated conceit, but also the care with which she created her characters and the message her work delivers. Sadly, as relevant as that message was in 1985, it is even more timely now.
The one quibble I have about the show is that the direction, by Mike Barker, Kari Skogland and others, may be stunning in many ways, especially in character development, but the pacing is unnecessarily slow. The camera often lingers a few seconds too long in many scenes before meandering on to the next. The directorial concept seems designed to allow the complexity of the story to sink in, but too often, it edges close to having the opposite effect.
Don’t let that, or anything else, put you off. “The Handmaid’s Tale” takes commitment — it’s impossible to watch it passively. It will, indeed, get inside your head and not only make you apprehensive about the future — it will make you justifiably wary of the present as well.
In the case of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the focus is on the very near future, as near perhaps as tomorrow, and that only enhances the series.