American Pastoral
(2016)
(SPOILERS) Maybe Philip Roth and cinema just don’t mix. I couldn’t
say for sure, as I haven’t read any of his novels, but the consensus is pretty
much that none have resulted in highly acclaimed adaptations (eight have been
translated to film or television thus far). American
Pastoral won him a Pulitzer, so I presume it must be good, although you wouldn’t know it from the stodge that
ends up on screen, any more than you’d have the remotest idea what it was in the
material that hastened Ewan McGregor to make his directorial debut.
He can’t take the blame for the screenplay (stand up, John
Romano) so that’s something in his favour, and technically, I guess, you could
call him competent, but in terms of putting a dramatically coherent film
together he does, alas, seem pretty hopeless, miscasting himself in the lead
(and this after a string of roles that have rather re-established his early
promise) to underwhelming effect – ironic, since he had been attached as an
actor long before he decided to direct. And there may lie the rub of his
mishandling, adapting the ‘60s milieu in the hokiest, undemanding fashion; at times,
you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re watching a sexualised, sweary episode of The Waltons, there’s so much platitudinous
messaging and moralising on display.
Concerning son of a glove manufacturer (not a euphemism) Seymour “The Swede” Levov and the falling prey of
his family – or more particularly his daughter Meredith (Dakota Fanning) – to
‘60s radicalism, McGregor professed to identify with the protagonist’s parental
concerns, but there’s barely a point when the proceedings don’t play in the
mode of caricature, rolling out every cliché in the book, be it period newsreel
footage and soundtrack choices (For What
It’s Worth, as magical as it is, only elicits a groan in this context),
activists sporting berets or the noble white man protecting his loyal black female
employee (Uzo Aduba) from rioting. This passage includes a particularly
unlikely moralising lecture by Aduba to a guilty-looking soldier (even though
the context is foregrounded, and critiqued by the Swede’s daughter, it still
plays as entirely tone deaf).
Fanning’s performance is reasonable but let down by
McGregor’s indifferent direction, while Jennifer Connelly gets a particularly
thankless part as wife and mother, involving plastic surgery leaving her
looking exactly like Jennifer Connelly, but with added lipstick. Other dubious
choices include a dose of waxy-looking CGI de-aging for Ewan and Jen in their
youth and hilariously crap prosthetics for Rupert Evans and Ewan in their
dotage.
On the periphery, a few performers add a bit of gristle to
enliven the proceedings; Molly Parker as a self-righteous and deluded shrink,
Peter Riegert channelling Elliot Gould as the Swede’s father, providing at
least some insight into why Roth has a reputation for being very funny as well
as insightful, and David Strathairn, instantly classing-up the bookend material
with a reflective, melancholic narration as Roth’s most-used authorial
stand-in, Nathan Zuckerman (attending the 45th high school reunion,
where he was classmates with the Swede).
It’s repeated several times, so I can only assume it was
considered pivotal, but Roth’s gloomy atheism as attested by Meredith – “Life is only a short space of time in which
you’re alive” – takes on an additional “whatever” aspect as rendered by
McGregor. The idea of the unappetising hidden truths, concealed by everyone,
lurking beneath the “American Pastoral”
isn’t so much trampled underfoot as left blandly underdeveloped. American Pastoral has the sense of an
era approached by those with only hearsay to contextualise it, falling back on
the window-dressing of trite character and thematic content found in such other
forlorn attempts at encapsulation as 1969
(which at least had a great soundtrack).
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.
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