Review of Indignation (2016) by Spangle — 27 Nov 2016

A very light reader, I have been trying to read more novels in recent times. Typically, these align with forthcoming movies or ones I have seen and enjoyed. One such novel was Philip Roth's Indignation. This summer I actually read two Roth novels with the other being American Pastoral, which was a work of pure brilliance. Indignation, however, was a much more hollow experience. Though I identified with the struggles Marcus Messner had with his now fracturing relationship with his father and the tough situation he finds himself in with his mother, he is just so damn whiny it turned me off. Then, by the end, the film jumps through time and it feels so sudden, even if tells you right off the bat that Marcus is dead and this is his story. The film version of Indignation is very much the same way. It keeps the same whiny Marcus and the same crappy ending, though the film makes a lot more sense here. Ultimately a story of innocuous events that can lead to one's death, Marcus' conclusion is richly deserved due to his antagonistic nature and lives up to the title of the film/novel "indignation". He is most certainly angry at perceived injustices, though these injustices are created through his own mind.

What makes me not enjoy Indignation as prose or a film is Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman) and how he is written. In essence, he is a poster from the Reddit subreddit /r/atheism brought to life. Angry at the world and believers for some perceived offense, Messner fights with everybody at the quiet and deeply religious Winesburg College. A girl engages with sexual relations with him and all he can do is wonder why the hell should we do that (he ultimately concludes it is because her parents are divorced). Over analytical and annoying, Marcus speaks unlike any other person in history. Verbose in his sentence structure, he smacks of a person who just scanned through the dictionary for tough sounding words and opts to implement them whenever he sees fit in order to seem well-read. This makes for a deeply annoying protagonist to watch, especially when he picks the worst hills to die upon. So, you do not like having to go to church to graduate. Then do not go to an openly Christian school. Easy. Crisis averted.

Tragically, the writing of both Roth in the novel and of James Schamus in the film do not save Marcus as a character. His character is overwrought and improperly dense. He may pretend to be smart, but no young man speaks at such length or in such a roundabout way to anybody. His awful writing is matched by that for Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon). When they speak to one another, it nearly gave me a migraine. They spoke in circles and were both direct and indirect simultaneously. Together, they make for an aggravating couple to watch, not a cute one. Plus, Olivia's willingness to just jump into sexual activities with Marcus makes no sense whatsoever in either form. She just shows up and boom it happens. There is never any communication until after and Marcus never seems to come to understand why these things happen since he does not do anything but lay there. Weirdest sex scenes ever. Long story short: these characters are not real. They are figments of a writer's imagination that speak long, verbose sentences that sound smart when they are in one's head, but when spoken aloud, they scream of having been written.

As such, both Lerman and Gadon's performances leave a lot to be desired. Neither brought their A-game here and make sure to emphasize the fact that they are acting. Their acting is so mediocre-to-bad here, it is as if they are just reading the words off of the page for the very first time. The duo's bad performances are worsened by the terrific performances by Tracy Letts and Linda Emond. As Dean Caudwell, the dean of men at Winesburg, Letts is tremendous. His encounter with Marcus Messner is a terrific piece of drama and of entertainment, in large part due to Letts. Set in his ways, stoic, and domineering, Letts' Dean Caudwell is the best part of this film. Similarly, the emotion of Marcus' mom (Emond) when she recounts the troubles with Marcus' dad's overbearing nature and change in behavior recently, is heart-wrenching. Authentic, grounded, and moving, Emond brings these moments to light with truly marvelous performance.

This said, the story is incredibly weak. Telling the story of how Marcus' **** tendencies got him killed, in spite of his smarts, Indignation skims through far too much to truly make sense. It feels as if the film is trying to make a larger comment on war here and keeps bringing up Korea in order to keep it in the back of your mind, even if it does not make sense. If Marcus got kicked out of Winesburg, could he have not applied to a new school? Staying out of the draft is not a Winesburg or nothing proposition. That is merely a fake Hollywood storyline that bears no resemblance to reality.