THHE Film Edit

The Sinner (2017)

This 8 episode psychological crime drama starring Jessica Biel, Christopher Abbot and Bill Pullman originally aired in the US early this year but is new to Netflix UK so let’s get into it.

It begins as many crime dramas do; we see semi-happy family Cora (Jessica Biel) and Mason Tanetti (Christopher Abbot) going about their life with their young child. From the outset something is off about Cora, she’s tense, distant and seems to struggle with intimacy and affection despite the fact that she lives right next door to and works with her in laws, it seems clear that something else is haunting her. Their family trip to the beach makes this very clear when out of the blue Cora stabs a man to death.

From the start we know that Cora is guilty so the question becomes why – this change up from the usual whodunit definitely hooks you in quickly. Although no crime drama is complete without a troubled detective, enter Bill Pullman as Detective Harry Ambrose, though not so much troubled as sad and socially awkward with a profound interest and knowledge in trees…oh and being dominated sexually. Of course Ambrose is immediately drawn into the mystery of the beautiful, seemingly normal mother and wife who randomly and brutally kills a man in front of family, friends and bikini clad strangers.

I will admit that I was hooked and blazed through it all in a matter of days but alas, I was left disappointed. Yes the characters are interesting and yes I desperately needed to know why, and yes I did appreciate that Christopher Abbot looks like Jon Snow but sounds nothing like him. But I felt rushed; the series ties itself up incredibly neatly and herein is my main issue.

Whilst the joy of having all questions answered is wonderful, it was short lived. For me the delivery was off, I didn’t believe that after a so long hiding the truth of herself to those closest to her Cora would trust Ambrose after a 3 line speech  proclaiming his understanding. I didn’t believe that after Ambrose faces opposition from almost all around him they would suddenly believe in Cora as much as him (obviously new evidence became apparent but there’s no persuasion, no scene in which he changes the mind of the prosecutor). And unfortunately, I didn’t believe in the justice observed in the series, wouldn’t it be lovely to think that it would be so easy – especially when your life is in the hands of the American judicial system. For me, there was a problem with the reality created in The Sinner, there needed to be some bitterness to this series, life cannot be tied up in a neat bow especially not when you’re talking about a complex case like the one shown to us – consider this, when Riz Ahmed’s character gets sent to prison in The Night Of he begins taking drugs and joins a gang: when Cora Is jailed she joins a prayer group.

Listen; The Sinner will definitely hook you in, it’s acted well, there are turns and twists -just be wary it may not deliver. I might just be too cynical but if I were you, I’d go for Top of the Lake it’s right next to it on Netflix.

(The Sinner is based on a book of the same name by Petra Hammesfahr)

Andy Davis

Andy Davis is an artist who I personally have been following for a while now after spotting one of his designs on a Billabong T-shirt about 5 years ago whilst mooching around in a shop! After that I kept seeing his name pop up and around all over the place. His contemporary, illustrative art embraces the surf culture and everything else to do with it, creating cool portraits of Dudes and Dudettes surfing, chilling and he has even captured this culture in pattern design.

Being a surfer himself has definitely influenced him and his style as I feel there’s no better way to learn about a culture than being out there and trying it yourself. His portraits are all super relaxed in his designs, slouched over with bent knees whilst catching a huge light blue wave, which really captures the relaxed side to surfing.

You can find all of his art on his website and I advise anyone who hasn’t seen them to check them out, whether your into that culture or not! They’re all fun and pleasant to look at!

“In a world from which the harsh strains of capitalism have removed thought and reflection, a poet who can stimulate a sense of the eternal and of death into consciousness is the true rebel, a figure whose colonial diminishments spur him to a negative apprehension of his society and of “civilised” modernity.”

–Edward Said, Yeats and Decolonisation

THHE Literature Edit

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year or so, you’ve probably heard of The Handmaid’s Tale by now. It is most widely known as the well received and highly topical TV series that was released earlier this year starring Elizabeth Moss of Mad Men and Top of the Lake. As a side note, Moss is, to me, probably one of the best actors of our time (despite being a Scientologist and previously married to Fred Armisen – but hey, even the best of us makes mistakes right?). The thing is, I didn’t really love the series – an opinion my fellow THHE writers will definitely disagree with – but I did love the book, which is why I’m choosing to write about that here.

The novel follows Offred, a Handmaid, in a dystopian near future where the US government has been replaced by a militant theocracy known as the Sons of Jacob. The women are split into handmaids (birthing stock), Marthas (cooks, cleaners and general domestic servants), wives (repressed marital partners in the Freudian sense) and econowives (a combination of all three). The handmaids are revered in society as modern-day Hagars, bearing children for barren Sarai-wives who are told they are lucky enough to be allowed to fulfil their true destinies. There are those other men and women who are sent to the colonies to rebuild or clean up toxic sludge, such as gender-traitors (Queer men and women), nuns, dissenters and terrorists – amongst others. The men seem to be split into the select few at the top of the pyramid, known as Commanders (who each have their own handmaid) or ‘angels’ (state militia) or members of the ‘eyes’ (a sort of secret service). The latter two are similarly also restricted from relationships that aren’t assigned to them by the state, which is known as ‘being given a woman’.
The novel itself is broken into the “present” (more on that later), in which we see Offred as a handmaid, the past, in which we see see Offred with her partner, daughter, mother and friend and then the “future/present” (narrative theory has frazzled my brain with this) which follows immediately after the narrative-proper in the form of a metafictional transcription of a university seminar on ‘the Gilead period’, in which we discover that the narrative we just read were unearthed by historians in the form of tapes, recorded by a handmaid known as ‘Offred’.  There is much to be said about the symbolism and historic richness of the novel, but to write about it here would would make this a much different post, perhaps one for another day. I recommend highly that you give the novel a read to get the full reaches of Atwood’s brilliant writing.

The thing that struck me the most about the 1986 novel by Margaret Atwood, in comparison with the series, was the subtleties written into the flashbacks to Offred’s former life before becoming a handmaid. These flashbacks are included in the series, but with less detail on Moira and with no reference to Offred’s mother whatsoever. Hopefully, flashbacks dealing with Offred’s mother will surface in the show’s second season, as it is in these reveals that we are given a look at Atwood’s indictment of humanity’s blissful ignorance and complacency in much more of a subtle way than in the show.
Atwood shows us Offred’s mother through fragmented flashbacks as a second wave feminist, marching in the pro-choice demonstrations and holding meetings in her home with a feminist collective who eschewed conducting relationships with men. Her mother wants a child, but nothing to do with the complexities of heterosexual co-parenting and, upon becoming pregnant, dismisses the father and chooses to raise Offred alone. Thus, Offred is raised in a feminist household and grows to resent her mother’s uprootedness and inability to behave like a ‘normal’ mother. She, like many of the women preceding the rise of the Sons of Jacob take their hard-won freedoms for granted. Offred dismisses her mother’s warning to avoid becoming too complacent with her partner, Luke (a fairly pathetic character in both book and series),  and her career, with Offred and Moira reducing her to being ‘cute’ and ‘spunky’. It is here we see how the women have taken for granted their position as ‘equal’ members of society by believing the battle has already been won. Offred learns this too late, after she has become what is essentially a glorified Trumpian incubator for mostly sterile old men.

Moira and Offred’s roles are reversed in the series from what they are in the book. In the book, Moira is gutsy, difficult, and relentless, encouraging Offred to use her position as the handmaid of a high ranking Commander to aid Mayday, the resistance movement. Her flashbacks reveal her as a Queer feminist, naturally more intersectional than second-wave feminists, but still a feminist who still minimises the struggles of Offred’s mother’s generation.
I thought the beauty of the novel was that Offred was weak, she had enormous flaws when it came to certain things and male characters in the novel. To me, this made more sense. We as humans are weak, and Offred’s past in both iterations of the tale depict her as quite apathetic towards the importance of constant feminist resistance play in our world – and therefore her transformation into a wannabe revolutionary while Moira wilts into an obsequious “other” seems slightly out of character. In the novel, this rallying cry is Moira’s, and their sisterhood is what encourages Offred’s strength.
It is this that is the most striking of the novel, it is a screaming, bright red warning surrounded by neon lights to all of us in the here and now, as women (and men), not to become comfortable and slip into quiet acceptance until we wake up under the thumb of a ruling class who have stripped our healthcare, our freedoms, our jobs and identities.

Give The Handmaid’s Tale a read, whether you’ve seen the show or not, here with more than 53% off. Do it.

–HZ