INDIGNATION
Although
he has officially retired from writing—and who could blame him, it’s a tough
racket, after all, and he’s had a good run—Philip Roth can still enjoy the lucrative
benefits of film adaptation. The latest
Roth novel to make it to the screen, Indignation,
actually seems a rather odd choice.
(Frankly, though I consider myself well-read and have read most of
Roth’s novels, I have never even heard of this one.) The new movie uses some material familiar to
any reader of his works—Jewish American domestic life, anti-Semitism, the
difficulty of assimilation , sexual initiation, and in this case, the
fish-out-of-water situation of a Jewish student from New Jersey attending a deeply
Protestant college in Ohio.
The
student, Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman), the son of a kosher butcher, attends
the wonderfully named Winesburg College in Ohio, where he encounters a number
of new experiences, all of which turn out badly. An excellent student and captain of his high
school baseball team, Marcus wants only to study and learn, ambitions
constantly thwarted by a series of personal and academic obstacles. He resents the compulsory chapel attendance,
the efforts of the Jewish fraternity to pledge him, and his two obnoxious
roommates. Although he captained his
high school baseball team, he even refuses to try out for the
Winesburgers.
When
Marcus meets a young woman named Olivia (Sarah Gadon), his troubles and
confusions compound. On their first
date, she provides him with the sort of sexual thrill freshmen in the 1950s can
only dream about, which causes him to react in some unpredictable ways, and
leads to a series of other problems. His
innocence in a way obstructs his understanding of whatever relationship could
develop, and he fails to comprehend Olivia’s own difficulties.
The
real meat of the picture, oddly, consists of a series of dialogues between Marcus
and the dean of the college (Tracy Letts), a thoroughly obnoxious academic who
attempts to discover and correct everything he finds wrong in Marcus’s attitude
and behavior. Dean Caudwell, a kind of
compendium of every dean you or I ever encountered in college, constantly
badgers Marcus, delving into his background, religious beliefs, dating habits,
and even his quite understandable desire to move from his crowded three-student
room to a single. Their dialogues go on
for far too long and grow increasingly disturbing, which may account for the
film’s otherwise odd and dubious title.
A
picture that starts and ends strangely, Indignation
for the most part concentrates on the perfectly interesting subject of its
protagonist’s struggles with a new and different situation. It begins to disintegrate in effect with
Marcus’s puzzled reaction to Olivia, his talky meetings with Dean Caudwell, and
an attack of appendicitis that brings his mother out to Winesburg; that visit
leads to greater disillusionment for Marcus and further problems in his
relationship with Olivia. Ultimately, a movie
that proceeds with a certain clarity, simplicity, and reason finally ends,
almost shockingly, in madness, despair, and death.
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