Screenwriter James Schamus has cultivated a remarkable career, largely thanks to his collaborations with director Ang Lee, with whom he worked with on The Ice Storm, Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
With his directorial debut Indignation, Schamus aims for the rafters by adapting Philip Roth’s complex and deeply personal novel about a stalwart young man coming into his own in closed-minded 50s America.
Logan Lerman, so subtly affecting in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, is equally appealing as Marcus Messner, an idealistic young man who escapes the Korean War draft in 1951 to gain admittance to Winesburg College in Ohio, with the intention of becoming a lawyer. Although raised in a strictly Jewish household (he grew up working alongside his father in a kosher-butcher shop), Marcus ardently identifies as an atheist.
Unable to connect with his overbearing dorm roommates (Philip Ettinger and Ben Rosenfield), Marcus throws himself into his studies, and takes a fancy to his regal-looking classmate, Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon). After going out on a nervous date, Marcus is surprised by Olivia’s sexually forward nature (in a borrowed Cadillac LaSalle, she’s the one who leans in for the first kiss). Olivia’s also, as she later confesses to a smitten Marcus, deeply damaged, revealing a scar on her wrist from a failed suicide attempt. Mystified by her troubled past, Marcus only grows more fascinated by his crush.
Marcus’ struggle with fitting in at college and flirtations with Olivia are all rendered somewhat perfunctory, despite Gadon’s beguiling presence. The set up to the crux of the story is exquisitely mounted (no surprise, given Schamus’ illustrious pedigree), but he invests little urgency into the proceedings – it’s pleasing to watch, but hard to care.
The film is delivered a needed jolt by an extended, fiery sequence in which Marcus vehemently defends his values to Dean Caudwell (a fabulous Tracey Letts), who can’t see eye-to-eye with his student, despite his deep admiration for his tenacity. Asked by the Dean how he gets by without a god to worship, Marcus says proudly: “I get straight As.” Indignation makes its case for existing with this enthralling scene that essentially boils down to a meeting of two dueling, and highly literate, minds.
Coming off that energy, the rest of Indignation plays out on a surer foot that what came before, with Marcus relegated to a hospital bed following the heated exchange, and dealing with his mother (a fantastic Linda Emond), who implores her son to sever ties with Olivia after noticing her scar.
For a first-time feature, Indignation is undoubtedly accomplished, with handsome production values, stellar performances, and the aforementioned tour-de-force scene that bodes of great things to come from the budding film-maker. Unfortunately, on the whole, Schamus’ debut feels too self-serious to fully engage.
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