Indignation

Logan Lerman and Sarah Gadon in Indignation

James Schamus' Indignation is the best filmed Philip Roth adaptation thus far. Damning with faint praise, I know, but longtime Ang Lee producer Schamus has crafted a very adept first film. Indignation has all the hallmarks of the tradition of quality, but Schamus proves he knows how to shoot intimate, dialogue dominated scenes that give space for his players to work at length. Schamus frames his action with feeling and tact, using close-ups judiciously. The film's premise, a Rothian Jewish protagonist experiencing the pains and joys of sex while going to college in uber goy 50s Ohio, is explored ambivalently, not succumbing to the overkill that has marred most Roth adaptations.

Logan Lerman is only serviceable as the lead. This is not fatal to the film as the character is a bit of a tabula rasa, a Roth stand-in who observes the alien goy society. Lerman is not able to register the surly rebelliousness implied in the title. This is why Tracy Letts, as the college's Dean of Students, dominates the long and provocative scenes between the two. Lerman's character's righteous rebellion against the staid and hypocritical norms represented by the Dean seems whiny because Letts' nuanced authority figure wipes him off the screen

It is to Roth's credit that he is able to auto-critique his stand-ins better as he matured as a writer. Not only is the protagonist's rebellion shown to be an adolescent one, but his inability to deal with his more sexually advanced and troubled girlfriend shows that he is just as repressed as the society he mocks. Sarah Gadon is superb as the femme, both tremulous and bold. The furtive sex in Indignation registers as dangerous because Schamus is able to portray the starched collar conformity of 1951 America without resorting to caricature. The lovers are in touch with their yearnings, but their behavior is monitored and surveilled by forces of societal control: the dorm den mother, a nurse, and the dean.

Because they cross a line, the lovers are punished. One goes mad and one dies in Korea. The bookend Korean sections are the worst parts of the film. Murkily directed, they suggest Schamus should avoid the action genre. They also point out the phoniness of Roth's fatalism. However, the film does expertly convey the ambivalent power of Roth's view of family. I will not soon forget Linda Emond blackmailing her son to dump his beloved shiksa. The wonderful performance does not stereotype a monstrous mother, but shows a real woman at the end of her rope with few options. What Indignation does best is portray an America of the 1950s with Roth's barbed ambivalence, one that is more The Paranoid Style in American Politics than Happy Days. (2/23/17)