{"id":20314,"date":"2016-08-19T00:25:27","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T07:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=20314"},"modified":"2016-08-18T16:07:17","modified_gmt":"2016-08-18T23:07:17","slug":"roth-film-now-playing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2016\/08\/19\/roth-film-now-playing\/","title":{"rendered":"Roth film now playing"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Indignation<\/em>, Logan Lerman plays model student Marcus Messner. (photo from indignationfilm.com<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

For his directorial debut, veteran producer and writer James Schamus chose a Philip Roth novel set during a turning point in the Jewish-American experience.<\/p>\n

Indignation<\/em> unfolds in 1951, when opportunities and prospects for young Jewish professionals were just beginning to expand in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou discover when you start to inhabit that world that there was a genuine sense of optimism, a genuine belief that belonging in this country was possible and real and happening,\u201d said Schamus, 57. \u201cAnd, on the other hand, you have all the traumas associated with the experiences of extended families in the Holocaust disappearing and a political culture in this country that was bizarrely \u2013 especially if you\u2019re of my age, and you didn\u2019t experience it but you realize that your parents did \u2013 about as openly antisemitic as you can imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schamus cites the covenants for real estate developments that excluded Jews, and the quotas for Jewish students at Ivy League universities. So, Marcus Messner, the protagonist of Schamus\u2019 insightful and moving film adaptation of Roth\u2019s 2008 autobiographical novel, is fortunate to receive a scholarship from a small college in Ohio. He has to travel some distance from his New Jersey home, but not as far as the young Americans fighting in Korea.<\/p>\n

A model student, Marcus (Logan Lerman) believes that college \u2013 and the world \u2013 is a meritocracy, and his brains and hard work will push him forward. His parents worry that he has little margin for error, and dread any disruption, such as Marcus\u2019 involvement with an alluring blond named Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gavon).<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the great crises as articulated by the characters in the book is, \u2018Oh Lord, my son is dating a shiksa,\u2019\u201d Schamus said with a smile in an April interview before he showed his film at the San Francisco International Film Festival. \u201cThe kind of psychic and carnal energy created by that dynamic drives a lot of Roth, but really a lot of the work of most major Jewish-American male artists of mid-century America. It\u2019s a bit of a trope.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Schamus, who does inordinate research for all his screenplays, found much more to plumb in Indignation<\/em>. He realized that the author subtly drew Olivia as a parallel to Roth\u2019s contemporary, Sylvia Plath.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that drew me was a spark of recognition that, in this late novel, Roth is going back to a much earlier time than he often [does], that he\u2019s connecting with a generation that we often don\u2019t realize that he\u2019s part of,\u201d said Schamus. \u201cWhile Roth is growing up in very, very Jewish Newark, N.J., up the road a few towns is Allen Ginsberg, who\u2019s a few years older. In fact, Ginsberg\u2019s aunt was Roth\u2019s English high school teacher.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, Indignation<\/em>, to me, is more than a tip of the hat to, \u2018I saw the best minds of my generation, dot, dot, dot.\u2019 It\u2019s the same subject. These were those best minds who were destroyed by precisely the system that Roth rails against in the book.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schamus, who grew up Jewish in Los Angeles and has lived and worked in New York for many years, wrote and produced most of Ang Lee\u2019s films, from Pushing Hands<\/em> through Taking Woodstock<\/em>. He also headed Focus Features for many years, earning a reputation as a staunch and astute supporter of independent filmmakers. (He financed and distributed the Coen brothers\u2019 A Serious Man<\/em>, among other titles.)<\/p>\n

Well-versed in the etiquette of adaptation, Schamus reached out to Roth as Indignation<\/em> was about to go into production.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t adapt one of the world\u2019s greatest writers and not get a little nervous,\u201d said Schamus. \u201cI grit my teeth and sent him the script before we started shooting, which was scary because, if he\u2019d had a violently negative reaction, it would have put me in the pickle of probably not making the movie, to be honest. Philip did me one of the greatest favors anybody\u2019s ever done a filmmaker, and that is he refused to read it.\u201d<\/p>\n

At press time, Indignation<\/em> was screening at Cineplex Odeon International Village.<\/p>\n

Michael Fox<\/strong> is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Indignation, Logan Lerman plays model student Marcus Messner. (photo from indignationfilm.com) For his directorial debut, veteran producer and writer James Schamus chose a Philip Roth novel set during a turning point in the Jewish-American experience. Indignation unfolds in 1951, when opportunities and prospects for young Jewish professionals were just beginning to expand in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[801,6185,6186,6184],"class_list":["post-20314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-antisemitism","tag-indignation","tag-philip-roth","tag-schamus"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}