Con the series The Testaments Margaret Atwood’s disturbing and very real universe returns. The long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, streaming from today on Disney+ Plus with the first 3 episodes (then one, every Wednesday, for a total of 10) it is – for now – a coming-of-age story that enchants and scares. The protagonists are Agnes (Chase Infiniti) and Daisy (Lucy Halliday), two teenagers swallowed by the dogmas of Gilead to grow in ignorance and in the cult of marriage. Although it brings with it a more ironic and childish air, the series maintains the same gloom and aberrant atmosphere as The Handmaid’s Tale.
The TestamentsTV series: plot of the first 3 episodes on Disney+
The Testaments is set four years after the finale of The Handmaid’s Tale. Agnes she is the adopted daughter of Commander MacKenzie and his late wife, Tabitha. The teenager lives in Gilead with his father and stepmother Paula (Amy Seimetz), who never hides the annoyance of having her around.
He attends college dollhouse Aunt Lydia’s (Ann Dowd) where girls from good families are educated to become the perfect ones, future wives of the elite. The girls are divided into groups: There are the Plum girls, like Agnes and her friendswaiting to become Miss Viola and therefore ready to move on to the Green color, waiting for the wedding. Then there they are the Turquoise Blues, the married ones as well as devoted mothers. Finally the Pearl, dressed in white. They come from other cities and, before climbing the hierarchical ladder, they must purify themselves of their sins.
The young woman lives protected in a muffled routine in which she is not allowed to read books, have a calendar or work. In addition to her friends Hulda (Isolde Ardies), Shunammite (Rowan Blanchard) and Becka (Mattea Conforti), she has around her affectionate maids Rosa (Kira Guloien) and Zilla (Blessing Adedijo). The only thrill in his life is the secret attraction for his guardian, the same age as Garth (Brad Alexander), a feeling he will never be able to afford to experience.
One day Daisy is entrusted to her (Lucy Halliday), a Pearl, with the task of instructing her and guiding her towards enlightenment. Her peer initially proves to be very devoted, humble and obedient. Despite the words of warning from her friend Shun, who reminds her to never trust white-dressed womenAgnes feels sympathy for her.
Chase Infiniti is Agnes in “The Testaments.” (Disney+)
The Testaments, review of the series based on the book by Margaret Atwood
Taking a grand departure from Atwood’s 2019 book of the same name, The Testaments sublimely reworks the same themes as The Handmaid’s Tale maintaining less solemn tones, more suitable for an audience of young spectators. Thus they remain intact reflections on the meaning of power and that frightening attraction to command which gives blind loyalty even to aberrant conduct.
It goes deeper man’s sense of misogyny towards womenenslaved compliant and functional shadows without will. A universe that is loved to be described as dystopian but which contains, frighteningly, an intense fragment of truth in our presentbetween armed powers and a return to obscurantist themes from the Middle Ages. Atwood herself certainly made no secret of that his source of inspiration is «the world we live in today».
To accompany arguments that would otherwise be difficult to digest there is the grace and beauty of a new generation of women. That of Agnes, subjugated from birth, forced to identify the first menstruation as the woman’s sole, sacred mission: to be fertile and conceive. A total identification with an archaic role well underlined by one of the most disturbing scenes of the series.
To receive the blessing of the new status of woman, he must kneel before his father and in front of all his male friends. A subtle violence, underlined by impressive details of a male hand holding a pen, a veiled allusion to virility. Daisy’s, however, is the freedom lost and regained by facing an ideological hell, capable of destroying people and memories. «Lambs do not go astray» Aunt Lydia states and thinks, metaphorically aside. What seems clear, however, is that in the face of awareness and awareness of two teenagers, it will no longer be possible to forget and accept the present.
The cast of The Testamentsthe differences between series and book
The Handmaid’s Tale And The Testaments I am closely linked not only by the writing of Margaret Atwood and by the same authors but by different characters in the same story: «History does not repeat itself, but rhymes with itself». Compared to the book, set 15 years after the end of the first, just 4 years have passed in the sequel. The original point of view, that of Aunt Lydia, gives way to the much younger Agnes and Daisy.
In commonin addition to tonal sumptuousness of the clothes and impeccable photographywhose aesthetic creates a perfect contrast with the brutality of the events, is also there a cast of excellent actresses. Ann Down returns as the cruel Aunt Lydia and so also Elisabeth Moss in those of the tormented June Osborne. What makes this series unforgettable is the hypnotic skill of Lucy Halliday (BlueJean) and above all Chase Infiniti’s performance, (one nomination for One battle after another), capable of showing all the nuances and shadows of a woman involuntarily blinded who returns to see the world as it is.
The aesthetics of “The Testaments”. (Disney+)
The story of Daisy and the mysterious Mayday
During one of the meetings, Aunt Lydia brings a manbound and gagged because he was caught masturbating. The girls are asked to decide whether to pardon the sinner or punish him. In choir, they choose to cut off his sinful hand with a circular saw. Daisy, faced with that cruelty, feels bad. Left alone with Agnes, she loses control and, struck by the violence, swears. Worried that she will literally lose her tongue for her sin, she begs her protector not to report her.
During a bus trip, they are surrounded by armed men who target the vehicle. Daisy saves Agnes from a bullet. What really happened? The mysterious Mayday is to blame, described as godless people living in sin. In a long flashback, Daisy’s past is revealed. She lived in Toronto with her parents, affectionate and modern, she attended school and loved her boyfriend.
His life changes when the mother and father die after a robbery that ends in murder and meets the mysterious June (Elisabeth Moss). The woman tells her the truth about her birth: she comes from Gilead and was taken away in swaddling clothes. The adoptive parents worked for Mayday, the resistance group to a world now dominated by misogyny and repression, where women are not free and homosexuals are killed. Because Daisy has returned to a theocratic Americawhose proclamations from the nefarious political class seemed to the world to be only sterile provocations?
