I've not read the Philip Roth novel on which "Indignation" is based, but I have read other Roth novels, and I must say that watching this film pretty accurately captured the claustrophobic tone of the Roth with which I'm familiar.
Logan Lerman plays a sheltered Jewish boy who experiences his first taste of a larger world when he gets a scholarship to a strict religious college. We're stuck in this kid's head for the entire film, and it's not a pleasant place to be. He's uptight, prudish, and overly-critical, holding himself and others to strict moral codes that have never been tested. He butts heads with the college dean, played by Tracy Letts, who bullies him and makes assumptions about him, but who also exposes some of his very real flaws. It's not a great film, but it is a conversation starter. It's about what happens when a young person realizes that the world doesn't necessarily always work the way he wants it to and being unable to cope with that reality. One of the things I liked best about it is how the movie upends our initial assumptions about the main character. We assume we are meant to sympathize with him and be on his side against the injustice he expects from being Jewish in a Christian school, but instead we realize that he's his own worst enemy and that the greatest threat comes from his own unbending rigidity.
Grade: B+
Logan Lerman plays a sheltered Jewish boy who experiences his first taste of a larger world when he gets a scholarship to a strict religious college. We're stuck in this kid's head for the entire film, and it's not a pleasant place to be. He's uptight, prudish, and overly-critical, holding himself and others to strict moral codes that have never been tested. He butts heads with the college dean, played by Tracy Letts, who bullies him and makes assumptions about him, but who also exposes some of his very real flaws. It's not a great film, but it is a conversation starter. It's about what happens when a young person realizes that the world doesn't necessarily always work the way he wants it to and being unable to cope with that reality. One of the things I liked best about it is how the movie upends our initial assumptions about the main character. We assume we are meant to sympathize with him and be on his side against the injustice he expects from being Jewish in a Christian school, but instead we realize that he's his own worst enemy and that the greatest threat comes from his own unbending rigidity.
Grade: B+