The Handmaid's Tale

This film actually really reminded me of Children of Men, which had a very similar plot. In Children of Men, society has fallen into disarray when it's discovered that people (or I suppose just women, really) can no longer give birth. At their core, I think that’s the biggest difference: in Children of Men, the birth rate is a flat zero, whereas in The Handmaid’s Tale, about 1% of females are still fertile. It’s only a minor disparity, but it makes a world of difference.

In Children of Men, no babies are being born. The opening scene has us and the main character watching a news broadcast where the breaking news is that the youngest person in the world (which would make him/her the last baby ever born) has just passed away. The people watching the newscast are absolutely devastated. While the world of Children of Men isn’t in complete chaos, it’s made clear that any semblance of order is just a product of indifference, delusion, or both. With humanity on the brink of extinction, there are riots, wars (over god knows what), resistance movements (resisting god knows what), and concentration camps (because of all the refugees from the wars). There are, of course, those who still cling to hope, like Human Project, a group that’s trying to cure the worldwide infertility.

On the other hand, we have The Handmaid’s Tale, where a number of women, albeit a small number, are still fertile. These women are inducted into the Handmaids, which basically seems like a cult where they’re “worshipped”, and it’s what this particular dystopian society seems to be structured around, as opposed to the chaos in Children of Men. It makes sense, seeing as the Handmaids are technically the only people who can stop humanity from being extinct. Like Children of Men, The Handmaid’s Tale is about hope and the continued existence of mankind, but their settings are very different.

The part that I don’t really get is why they’re treated so awfully, given their practically divine status in society. In The Handmaid’s Tale, hope isn’t really the issue so much as oppression is, and I think it’s where the film kind of fails. One of the New York Times book reviewers characterized the novel as “’very readable’ but criticized the ‘thin credibility of the parable’”, and that essentially sums up my feelings about the film. I enjoyed it as much as I did Nineteen Eighty-Four, which I liked quite a bit, but I really felt that The Handmaid’s Tale’s presentation was off. A setting where only 1% of the population is fertile sounds really interesting, but it was pushed aside by a pretty standard story about how the government and too much power should never be together.