7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Set in a dystopian future, a woman is forced to live in sexual servitude under a fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship.
Starring: Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Joseph Fiennes, Max Minghella, Amanda BrugelThriller | Insignificant |
Sci-Fi | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.00:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
German: DTS 5.1
English SDH, French, German, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Three-disc set (3 BDs)
Region free
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Hulu's multi-Emmy-winning original series, The Handmaid's Tale, had remarkable timing.
Although creator/writer/producer Bruce Miller (The 100) began to develop the show in 2015, its
production coincided with America's 2016 presidential election, which was accompanied by
searching—and often acrimonious—debate about the state of democracy both at home and
abroad. The election brought new attention to America's complex relation between religion and
politics, which is now being probed, adjusted and negotiated more openly than at any time in
recent history. A few months after the release of Season One's final episode on June 14, 2017,
the explosion of the #MeToo movement prompted renewed focus (and intensified militance) over
the treatment of women in contemporary society, especially by men in positions of power.
All of these hot-button contemporary topics lie at the heart of Handmaid, which makes it even more remarkable that it’s been over
thirty years since Margaret Atwood wrote the novel of which Miller’s series is a relatively faithful adaptation. The Canadian author’s dystopian tale
had been previously adapted for the
screen in 1990 with a script by Nobel Prize-winning writer Harold Pinter, direction by acclaimed
German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin
Drum) and a talented cast led by Robert Duvall,
Faye Dunaway and the late Natasha Richardson. But the film lacked the cautionary bite of
Atwood's book, and Miller rightly sensed that it would take more than a two-hour movie to fully
explore the author's spookily prescient vision. The ten episodes of Handmaid's first season,
which range from under fifty minutes to over an hour, gave Miller and his creative team
sufficient room to build out Atwood's elaborately imagined vision of a totalitarian society
organized around the strict control of women's reproductive functions. Season One of Handmaid
examines that world and the people who inhabit it with an intensity that is often painful to
watch—but so compelling that you can't look away.
The serialized TV format has also allowed Miller and his team to create opportunities for
expanding Atwood's world beyond the scope of the original novel. By the end of Season One,
Handmaid had covered most of the book's events. In Season Two, which Hulu has just begun
streaming, the series launches into previously unseen realms. (Atwood serves as a
producer and creative consultant.)
Handmaid is co-produced by MGM's television division, which has released Season One on Blu-ray through its distribution deal with
Fox. For anyone without a Hulu subscription, the Blu-rays
offer a first-rate opportunity to experience a series that made history by becoming the first
streamed content to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series (plus seven additional awards,
including Lead Actress Elisabeth Moss). Blu-ray purchasers also receive the benefit of the
show's full 5.1 soundtrack, which Hulu viewers cannot currently enjoy, because the service is
still limited to stereo sound.
The principal cinematographer on The Handmaid's Tale is Colin Watkinson, whose work with
director Tarsem Singh on The Fall and Emerald City established his talent for creating
surreal
imagery. Like its costumes and production design, Handmaid's digital cinematography is highly
stylized, with scenes in present-day Gilead featuring artfully composed frames and tableaus
(which Watkinson has described as "Kubrick-esque") and flashbacks shot in a handheld, cinéma
vérité style. The palette has been subtly desaturated throughout. In Gilead, specific colors
(notably, blue) have been purposefully leached from the environment, so that the reds of the
handmaids' uniforms leap off the screen, even though they are relatively modest in intensity.
Scenes inside the Waterford house are frequently dark and shadowy, while "public" locations
such as hospitals and supermarkets are brightly lit with surreal clarity. Nowhere in Gilead does
anything look natural, which establishes a sharp visual contrast with flashbacks depicting a pre-Gilead society. Colors in those scenes are faded, as if
Gilead were slowly erasing such memories, but they remain far more life-like.
As with a number of other streaming originals (e.g., Star Trek:
Discovery), Handmaid is shown by Hulu at an aspect ratio of 2.00:1, with thin black bars above and below. For
its Blu-ray presentation, MGM has opened up the image to fill the entire 1.78:1 standard HD
frame. As far as I can tell, there has been no cropping, only a small addition of picture
information at top and bottom.
MGM's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-rays effectively present Handmaid's nightmarish alternative
reality, capably reproducing the detail of the show's production design, which is deliberately
spare and severe (with occasional exceptions for flashbacks and specialized environments in the
present). Sharpness is excellent, though not overassertive, and densities accurately reflect the
photography's minimalist aesthetic. Fine detail tends to drop off in dark interior scenes, but this
is by design. The image is free from aliasing, banding or other interference. MGM has spread the
ten episodes of Season One over three BD-50s, with two discs containing four episodes each and
a third with the final two episodes, plus extras. The average bitrates on the first two discs are a
little under 23 Mbps, while the final two have generous averages near 35 Mbps. The compression
appears capable throughout, with no artifacts or anomalies.
Hulu streams The Handmaid's Tale in stereo, but the Blu-ray discs have a 5.1 soundtrack encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. The discrete multi-channel formatting improves the clarity and prioritization of dialogue, and it allows for the occasional discrete rear channel effect. But the chief beneficiary of the 5.1 encoding is the atmospheric and spooky score by Adam Taylor (August: Osage County), which artfully uses isolated string instruments and minimalist cues with sustained individual notes to contribute to Handmaid's near-constant sense of foreboding. Handmaid is the rare serialized drama where the musical score doesn't simply underline big emotional moments but fully blends with the rest of the show's elements to become an essential part of the series' environmental texture. The 5.1 mix gives the score room to breathe, making it all the more unsettling and effective.
The extras can be found on disc 3.
It's interesting to compare The Handmaid's Tale to another currently popular TV series that, at
first glance, appears to have little in common with Miller's and Atwood's dystopian creation.
Both Handmaid and Westworld
portray imaginary societies in which a privileged class enjoys
complete hegemony over a group of conscious beings designated as property. Both series
examine the barbarous and corrosive effects of such power on those who exercise it, and in both
series we routinely experience that power from the victims' point of view. But in Westworld,
there's no cumulative result (at least initially), because the victims' memories are constantly
being wiped clean of the atrocities committed against them. Handmaid doesn't indulge in such
luxuries, as June and her fellow handmaids suffer day after day of hopeless enslavement and abuse. Some
let their identities be obliterated, some go insane, and a few take their own lives. June becomes
the heroine of Handmaid, because she manages to find faint rays of hope in a place where hope
should be extinguished. Discomforting, but highly recommended.
2006
2017
2018
2018
2016
Zero Population Growth
1972
2015
Warner Archive Collection
1940
1941
1969
2015
Masterpiece Classic: Page Eight
2011
2019
2013
2017
2014
Nuclear Countdown
1977
2000
1936
1977