Review: ‘Indignation’ nails the early ’50s

“Indignation”

Rated R (1:50)

Opens today at Dole Cannery Stadium 18 and Kahala 8

“Indignation” captures with an uncanny realism a moment of innocence and caution in a post-World War II era, when an oppressive, puritanical conformism dominated white America. Adapted from Philip Roth’s 2008 novel, which was inspired by his college years and set in 1951, it evokes the drabness of a time when living standards were much lower than today; anti-Semitism was pervasive; and the fear of communism was epidemic. Teenage culture had yet to flower. The early murmurings of rock ’n’ roll were distant stirrings on black R&B radio, and racial segregation held sway. The tone of everyday life was circumspect and grimly proper.

This first feature directed by screenwriter James Schamus (who has written and produced several of Ang Lee’s films) stars Logan Lerman (the “Percy Jackson” films, “Fury”) as Marcus Messner, the only son of Max (Danny Burstein), a kosher butcher in Newark, N.J., and his wife, Esther (Linda Emond). To avoid being drafted into the Korean War, Marcus attends the fictional Winesburg College in Ohio, where he is housed with two other Jewish students whom he dislikes. He turns down an invitation to join a Jewish fraternity.

Marcus, strong-willed, rebellious and a self-proclaimed atheist, is intellectually arrogant. He expresses himself in precise sentences and paragraphs that sound so carefully formed that it is almost as if he were reading an essay. At the same time, you can feel the tension behind his thought process.

One of the most powerful scenes here is an invasive interview with Dean Caudwell (Tracy Letts), who summons Marcus into his office after Marcus moves to shabby new quarters to get away from his roommates. Marcus also strongly objects to rules that require his regular attendance at chapel services. The conversation is a kind of interrogation by the dean that leads to a debate about Marcus’ intellectual idol, Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, mathematician and author of the famous essay “Why I Am Not a Christian.”

Sexually innocent to a degree that is almost unimaginable today, Marcus develops a crush on Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon), a beautiful blond, non-Jewish student who feels as out of place as he. At the end of their first date, he is shocked when, unbidden, she gives him oral sex in a borrowed car. Because of his prudish upbringing, he is disgusted and backs away from the budding relationship.

After a separation, they warily reconnect, and Olivia, who has scars on her wrist, confesses to Marcus that she had a breakdown and attempted suicide. In Gadon’s sensitive performance, you can feel the vulnerability just beneath the surface of her apparent poise. Marcus isn’t worldly enough to understand fully the implications of her instability. But when Esther visits and meets Olivia, she immediately notices and pleads with her son to discontinue the relationship.

“Indignation” might be dismissed as a small, exquisite period piece, but it is so precisely rendered that it gets deeply under your skin. There are a lot of words, and every one counts. You feel the social pressures bearing down on characters who, in accordance with the reticence of the times, tend to withhold their emotions and suffer in silence.

In a case of displaced paranoia, Marcus’ father compulsively worries about his son and exhibits signs of serious mental instability. Emond’s bossy, overbearing Esther is a descendant of the sort of fiercely moral matriarch played by Anne Revere in movies like “Body and Soul” and “A Place in the Sun.”

The same current of social paranoia that runs through “Indignation” is palpable in the Todd Haynes films “Far From Heaven” and “Carol,” studies of homophobia in the 1950s. Olivia’s impulsive sex act in this repressive climate makes Marcus worry that she is “a slut.” But the movie doesn’t go into the ramifications of the act, once word gets out.

The film is a little too careful about keeping the lid on its characters’ emotions to bring out the erotic forces percolating under their decorum. Marcus and Olivia exhibit little outright passion, although it becomes clear that they’re in love. In the history of modern courtship, the early ’50s was a time when couples necked for hours without going all the way.

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