Don't be fooled by the lighter tones of Margaret Atwood's sequel. Juna's daughter is now grown up in Gilead, where the daily horrors continue, and Lady Lydia returns.
I had to give up early on the TV adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale — the mass execution scene had destroyed me — because it was so bleak, so scary, so terrifying, and so true. Atwood's dystopian tale, published in 1985, was based on events that had already happened under totalitarian and tyrannical regimes around the world. On screen, the visceral horror was almost unfathomable from the start.
Now, the 2019 sequel, The Testaments, comes from The Handmaid's Tale showrunner Bruce Miller. Get ready.
In some ways, it’s lighter and brighter than its predecessor—a kind of reboot for young adults. Set a few years after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, it focuses on a new generation of women in Gilead. But it’s a young-adult version that still includes brutal punishments, rotting corpses hanging in public, and indoctrination and abuse—and the youth of the protagonists makes it even harder to watch. The iconography remains striking. The color palette has expanded beyond red, white, and green: young girls of the right class dress in pink dresses and mantillas; older ones (“Plums”) switch to purple, with more stylized headdresses than the forbidden ones of handmaids; and when they menstruate, they enter the teal of married women.
Agnes (Chase Infiniti) is the adopted daughter of Commander MacKenzie and his late wife, Tabitha. We also know that she is also Juna/Offred's first stolen daughter, Hannah. Regardless, the commander's new wife, Paula (Amy Seimetz), would like to get the child off her hands as soon as possible.
Agnes attends an elite prep school, run by Miss Lydia. Yes, that Miss Lydia – the fierce Miss Trunchbull played by the incomparable Ann Dowd. Whether she’s the old Miss Lydia or the new model after the epiphany that occurs at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale remains to be seen. But regardless of your knowledge of Gilead, the team has done a good job of making it work.
Lady Lydia assigns Agnes to lead her young daughter Daisy (Lucy Halliday). Daisy is one of the Pearl Girls, white-clad followers of Gilead’s version of Christianity, often orphaned or recruited from overseas, and often suspected of spying for the teachers. Their increasingly close and complicated relationship forms the backbone of the 10 episodes, which also reveal Daisy and Lady Lydia’s history in flashbacks. In the present, Agnes must come to terms with her period and her “eligibility.” One particular scene features her kneeling before her father in her new, colorful clothes, an accurate depiction of teenage girls’ experiences with men. There are also glimpses into her best friend Becka (Mattea Conforti) and Becka’s father, as life in Gilead becomes increasingly unbearable.
Although it is mixed with a little humor and the protagonists' inherent hope, The Testaments, like its predecessor, is a study in groupthink – power, corruption, and how ordinary people succumb to evil practices. It shows, in particular, man's cruelty to women, men's willingness to oppress others, and that there is nothing new under the sun. /GazetaExpress/
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