Movie: Indignation

Indignation:  a coming of age movie based upon a Philip Roth novel.  It is 1951 and the protagonist, Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman), is graduating from a Newark high school.  He has been accepted at the fictitious Winesburg College in Ohio.  Roth also graduated from a Newark high school in 1950 but went to college at Bucknell in nearby Pennsylvania.  Marcus and his father (Danny Burstein), a kosher butcher, have a close relationship.  As Marcus’ departure date gets closer, the father becomes obsessively worried about the fate of his only child.  Later in the film, we learn from the mother (Linda Emond) that during Marcus’ college attendance, the father has become increasingly unhinged.  If Marcus hadn’t gone to college, he would have been drafted and most probably sent to Korea.  Early in the film there is a Korean war sequence followed by a Temple burial scene of a young Jewish man killed in action.  As a college student, Marcus is protected by deferment.  The empathy evoked in those of us who were Vietnam War candidates is quite real.  At college, Marcus is assigned to room with the only two Jewish upperclassmen at the college who are not members of a fraternity.  Among its other mandates, Winesburg requires attendance at Christian chapel services regardless of a student’s religious belief.  Things were different in 1951, including blatant anti-Semitism.  Marcus, a virgin, meets beautiful blond named Olivia (Sarah Gadon) and becomes smitten.  Their relationship  becomes the central focus of the film.  Olivia, who is not Jewish, also feels out of place and her history is critical to the story.  Running throughout this 110 minute tale is the adversarial relationship between Marcus and the college’s Dean Caudwell (Tracy Letts), including a heated discussion about Bertrand Russell.  This film marks the directorial debut of James Schamus.  It contains a good amount of intelligent dialogue; I understand the film closely tracks Roth’s novel.  The acting, particularly Linda Emond’s performance, is first rate.  The characters are believable: Roth should be pleased with the film.