Review: American Pastoral

Seymour "Swede" Levov would seem to have it all: he's a Greatest Generation Newark Jew with the blond, blue-eyed looks of a WASP, a former Miss New Jersey for a wife, a beloved daughter, and an idyllic home in the farmlands of Old Rimrock, New Jersey. Yet even those upon whom the light seems to shine brightest have their fair share of troubles, and American Pastoral tracks the Swede's journey from glory to tragedy.

Philip Roth's works, with their dense reflections on Jewish and American identity, sexuality and society, have been notoriously difficult to adapt for the screen. One has to admire Ewan McGregor's ambitions in selecting Roth's American Pastoral as his directorial debut even if its scope is far too expansive for him to handle. He does marginally better on the more familiar ground of acting, but his performance as Swede never fully conveys the tragedy that befalls the man as the relatively idealistic Fifties gives way to the turbulent Sixties.

The crux of the film revolves around the father-daughter relationship between Swede and Merry (played as a child by Hannah Nordberg and Dakota Fanning as a teenager), a lovely blonde child impaired by a severe stutter who grows up to be a foulmouthed revolutionary. When a local bomb goes off in the local post office/gas station and kills its owner, Merry's subsequent disappearance marks her as the prime suspect. Her years-long absence strains the marriage between Swede and Dawn (Jennifer Connelly), the former hanging on to the hope that they will find their child whilst the latter struggling to comprehend how Merry could possibly committed such a horrific act of violence.

Of course, Swede's efforts to track down his daughter are not merely that, but metaphorical attempts to regain an innocence that may never have been there to begin with. Along the way, he encounters the mysterious Rita Cohen (a very fine Valorie Curry), who may have influenced Merry and who may hold the clue to her whereabouts. Swede and Rita's scene in a motel, wherein she taunts him to have sex with her, may be the one instance when American Pastoral demonstrates any frisson of life. Otherwise, this is a dull and resolutely flat affair filled with actorly performances that grate rather than enlighten or draw one in on the characters' inner workings. Connelly seems adrift, unable to create any dimension within Dawn. Fanning strains with her characterisation in the first half, but is far more effective in the second half where Merry's commitment to her cause is embodied with a calmer power than the previous shrieking obnoxiousness.

Production-wise, it's a solid film but nothing ever really rises above the level of competence. McGregor and screenwriter John Romano are largely faithful to Roth's novel, though the film might have been less of a slog had they gotten rid of the framing device featuring Roth's celebrated alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman (David Strathairn), which strikes one as rather unnecessary.

American Pastoral

Directed by: Ewan McGregor

Written by: John Romano; based on the novel by Philip Roth

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Jennifer Connelly, Dakota Fanning, Peter Riegert, Rupert Evans, Uzo Aduba, Molly Parker, Samantha Mathis, David Strathairn, Hannah Nordberg, Valorie Curry