Indig­na­tion

Anoth­er week, anoth­er attempt to trans­pose the work of cur­mud­geon­ly lit­er­ary sage Philip Roth to the big screen. To say that this is one of the bet­ter efforts (but is still not that great) goes some way to con­firm what a con­found­ing and com­plex writer Roth is. His genius prose cre­ates no sim­ple path from page to film, even with a vet­er­an screen­writer (and occa­sion­al schol­ar) like James Schamus involved.

Indig­na­tion is the sto­ry of Mar­cus (Logan Lehrman), the intel­lec­tu­al­ly gift­ed, emo­tion­al­ly over­sen­si­tive son of a Jew­ish, New Jer­sey butch­er who is giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty of tran­scend­ing his work­ing class lot by tak­ing up a place at uni­ver­si­ty. Yet, as much as he’s try­ing to dis­tance him­self from his salty eco­nom­ic back­ground, he is also try­ing to break free from what he sees as reli­gious cliqueism and the inward look­ing Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. Even after renounc­ing his faith, he is forcibly thrown togeth­er with oth­er Jew­ish stu­dents and is swift­ly asked to join a Jew­ish fra­ter­ni­ty. His only release from the the frus­tra­tions of spir­i­tu­al iden­ti­ty is his rela­tion­ship with Sarah Gadon’s Olivia, who fur­ther temps him down the path of idle transgression.

The film com­pris­es of lengthy, ele­gant­ly exe­cut­ed dia­logue sequences in which char­ac­ters argue in detail about their frus­tra­tions and anx­i­eties. The cen­tre­piece of the film sees Mar­cus take up rhetor­i­cal arms against Tra­cy Letts’ Dean Caud­well, who appears to be vic­tim­is­ing the stu­dent for not want­i­ng to con­form to his strict scholas­tic pro­gramme. Both actors charge at the scene with supreme con­fi­dence, and it seems that hav­ing them just speak­ing the words is the best and sim­plest way to chan­nel the essence of Roth.

Yet the film nev­er seems to be any­thing more than a series of learned dis­cus­sions with no pro­found con­se­quence. Con­fu­sion begets more con­fu­sion, and rev­e­la­tions and lessons are notable in their absence. Mar­cus’ sense of moral supe­ri­or­i­ty is pounced upon for the sake of empa­thy, sug­gest­ing that he’s the enlight­ened one while Caud­well is his back­ward-think­ing foil. And the effort the actors place on enun­ci­a­tion and dynam­ics often leaves the dia­logue feel­ing like it’s being par­rot­ed rather than under­stood and expressed.

Bra­vo to Schamus for mak­ing some­thing which is so focused on detail rather than big, broad dra­ma, but too often the events in the film skirt the bounds of inter­est rather than break through to its core.