Indignation (2016)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on August 17, 2016 @ tonymacklin.net.

Films are different from novels.

Film terms are different from literary terms. In films, punctuation is editing. Language is image. But dialogue does matter.

One just hopes that when a film is made from a novel, it is true to the author's vision and - if the novel was written by an artist - that the film has artistic style on its own terms.

It's rare that a film can emulate an artistic novel.

Philip Roth has not been fortuitous in the movies made from his renowned literary oeuvre. Each film is softer than Roth's literary sensibility and style.

There is a harshness and bluntness - sometimes a nasty quality - to Roth's sense of reality. He is witty and withering. He is satiric and ironic. Irony permeates his work. This does not fit easily - if at all - on the silver screen.

The common critical opinion is that Roth's work is too literary to go from page to screen. But that hardly seems valid. Roth has not been served well by filmmakers.

Generally, the directors and screenwriters that attempt to translate and transfer his work fail - from Portnoy's Complaint (1972) to The Human Stain (2003). Only in Goodbye, Columbus (1969) does any of Roth survive, but it's mostly shimmering young actors.

Indignation, the latest adaptation of Roth's fiction, is a mixed bag. It's directed by a first-timer. James Schamus is an accomplished producer/screenwriter, but he's inexperienced behind the camera. He brings a softness that Roth's novel doesn't have.

Although Schamus uses a voice-over by Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman) and could use the power of Roth's words for impact and focus on Roth's ultimate theme, he doesn't. Instead he tacks on a different beginning and conclusion that the novel doesn't have. He drops Roth's ironic last chapter "Historical Note," cuts much of his penultimate chapter, and weakens Roth's vision.

Schamus deletes where the title Indignation comes from.

I doubt that the 1950s were as drab as Schamus makes them. Many of Roth's themes are in television's Roadies, but Cameron Crowe's show has an energy Indignation lacks.

Schamus makes the mistake of a first-timer by overusing music. He has the lilt and power of Roth's words, but he dilutes them with piano and violin.

Such is the fate of Philip Roth at the movies.

Roth's Indignation becomes Schamus' Imposition.

Indignation is a coming-of-age tale. Also a coming-of-rage tale.

In 1951, young Marcus Messner (Lerman) leaves his oppressively-doting family in Newark and goes to Winesburg College, in Ohio. [Obviously it's an allusion to Sherwood Anderson's collection of short stories Winesburg, Ohio.]

Marcus is a Jewish, atheistic intellectual. But he's youthful and inexperienced. He's an alien in a strange land. He wants to get along, but he tends to overreact.

He becomes smitten with blonde Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon), and finally asks her out on a date. At the end of the date he has a sexual experience that is beyond his understanding. He is left confused and bewildered.

It's one of those occurrences in life that Roth suggests add up to where life goes and whom it effects. How one copes with such events and their reverberations is what makes life and death.

The fate of Marcus is influenced by his father's surveillance, his mother's challenge, his roommates, the dean of his college, his relationship with Olivia, and ultimately his not following the rules.

We don't know how much Roth's own experiences inform his work, but we can be sure a lot do. Roth graduated from Bucknell, a small liberal arts college in central Pennsylvania. He was a sophomore in 1951. In Indignation, he moved college over one state. At Bucknell he had a girl friend named Betty Powell, who like Olivia had parents who were divorced, which was extremely rare. Schamus seems to have known she majored in French, because in his screenplay he has Olivia say she is going to study French literature.

However, when Schamus uses Roth's own words, Indignation is at its most gripping. The best scene is a lengthy, spirited conversation between Marcus and the smug Dean Caudwell (Tracy Letts). A conversation. Imagine that!

Logan Lerman is at his most energetic in that scene. However, too often Lerman has to be blank and bland. He's a firebrand who has no fire. One might wish for a young Edward Norton, who would have generated sparks even when he was quiet.

Sarah Gadon is impressive as the wounded WASP girl who dismays Marcus.

Roth's theme of occurrences that channel one's life should connect with audiences. Indignation may pique memories and attitudes. The audience - both male and female - will think of sex acts and first experience.

Roth's theme of missed or lost opportunities is relevant to us all.

I once signed a contract to write a book about Philip Roth's work. Eventually I passed the project onto an acquaintance. I also once turned down a Gilman fellowship in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University. Marcus would overreact.

Roth's vision is instructive. Schamus dilutes Roth's vision. He muddles it.

Goodbye, Columbus becomes Goodbye, Indignation.

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