Yeah, I did put a question mark in there. This film, for lack of a better term, rides a very different track that I have to acknowledge before I get down to the review's brass tacks. This particular work appears only on Hulu right now. And I watch it on my television. Only it's not built like a tv show. There's a moment, when you binge watch something on one of these subscription services, where you can see the jet black cutout for a commercial. It was made for and, well, written directly with the concept that there's going to be a commercial. So I know and interpret it as being television. Back in my younger years, when I did summer stock, one of our assignments was to create a soap, to write one of those intricate tales of multiple short scenes. And we were taught, you create from commercial to commercial.
So, even though I was watching this ON my television, it had nothing linked to it being television. In fact, it's episodic nature suggested it could probably be seen as some kind of mini-series.
Fate knows, I loved me some Shogun back in the day. Made me read the book. Couldn't put it down, in fact.
Because it was four thousand bazillion pages.
It's important that link this to the book, that book. See, there's something I've noticed, and maybe I've mentioned it here over time.
See, this particular, I don't know, event-movie, is based on a book that raised in relevancy since the erection of 45. Dystopian novels have made a surge lately. Now, I've noticed that, whenever we have a Flat Earth Society Member in charge, and, yes, I'm looking at you 80s, dystopian tales are back in vogue.
1984.
Blade Runner.
Cyberpunk.
The Giver
Yeah, sure, Dems have movies too (zombie movies...think faceless masses that follow without thinking...wait, that sounds like the GOP too). But I'd like to focus on this aspect. Books. Now, common thought is that the "book was better."
That's usually correct.
It makes sense. Pages of prose elaborate the story so that the reader's journey is eased into the theme with more detail and length. We get it a bit easier. Movies? Not so much. You have dialogue and images. All of it live, before a camera. Severely limiting. However, such a boundary gives the filmmaker a new source of creativity-a way of communicating chosen thematic elements to a movie bound audience.
I, for one, am okay with this. Totally okay. Dances with Wolves is a boring, shit of a journal with scribbled images. Then? The movie gave us those open vistas the protagonist was experiencing. Gone With the Wind? That racist tome? The edges were honed off and the story shone a bit a brighter in the new light.
But let's cut to the television, shall we?
Steve King's Salem's Lot, directed by Tobe Hooper-for television.
SCARED THE SHIT OUT OF ME.
Shogun? Huge book. Huge series. But every storyline was captured and we were able to follow.
The elaboration all ties together, so if you're still with me, here it goes.
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, is excellent. And, in part, because the format it is in really enriches it. Currently playing over there on Hulu, they've retooled some aspects, using cell phones and a bit more modern tech, and then showing it being shunned by the Church Elite. Now, in case you are not aware, the book is about a world slightly in the future, where women have finally lost all rights to their bodies. A viral infection is suggested, affecting fertility in the human race and woman are unable to conceive. It's a horrible alternative future, but a possible situation if womens' rights to their bodies are still contested into the next few decades. In this story, abortions are made illegal and any vision of sex as for anything but child creation is criminal. Any sex outside of marriage is seen as rape and men are scratched to death. A new, faith based, theocracy arises and those who don't worship are seen as subversives and punished.
The book is a page turner as it follows one such woman, who is able to have children, so she's enslaved to a wealthy family. She dreams of her past life and only wishes for escape to find the children who were taken away from her. She's labelled a "handmaiden," and forced to work for the upper 1%.
See? Kinda timely as 45 gives us a tax plan that only benefits himself and those who are wealthy.
All the while using the church's pews as his voting base.
Art reflecting life?
The book had already been made into a movie, but, in this case, given the gift of horrible timing, the story can thrive. And especially in this format. Now we can see women and their suffered glances and muffled thoughts, not in a five minute monologue on a cinema screen, but, instead, in the intimate confines of our private homes. Here is where the message is successful.
And what a presentation. As media tries to grow in this new Information Age, this new piecemeal approach is the way of the future. We are basically paying to avoid commercials. But we get something from it. A strong narrative that isn't hung up on advertising and putting Coke cans in the background. The source material is respected and given the beats it needs to help the audience grow in compassion for these young women who are not allowed to think or act for themselves. I like the movie.
If that's what we want to call it. It's well presented, well acted, slickly edited, and, yes, massively timely.
The only thing I see as a drawback? Sometimes a series becomes uneven. It's the nature of the beast. Just some points of a tale are more poignant than others, and, when different directors are involved, there are slight tone changes.
Watch this movie/serial/Hulu thingie. It's good. And it's important.
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