Indignation (2016)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Good movie but grossly overrated

best movie i've ever seen.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I would like to applaud the person who wrote the summary for Indignation since it peaked my curiosity and got me to watch the film. However, after the end credits rolled I went back and reread it only to feel somewhat shortchanged. Here it is:"In 1951, Marcus, a working-class Jewish student from New Jersey, attends a small Ohio college, where he struggles with sexual repression and cultural disaffection, amid the ongoing Korean War."Let's begin with the sexual repression angle. There is almost none. The greatest form of repression comes from within the main character, Marcus. He is sexually inexperienced and therefore doesn't know how to deal with the forward ways of a fellow classmate named Olivia. That's all it is. Nobody tells him he can't go on dates. Even his parents encourage him to do so, albeit in a smothering sort of way. He is later told that he can no longer see Olivia but not because of "you are jewish she isn't" or "not before you are married" arguments. The reason is laughable but we'll get back to that in a moment. The only possible manifestation of sexual repression that could occur but doesn't is regarding the theatrical roommate who is referred to as "queer" although this is never confirmed since he is after all only a secondary character and we need time for...Cultural disaffection? Where? The exchange with the college dean? It takes up a great big chunk of screen time only to go in circles, never land any lasting point of contention on Marcus's behalf and ends with what I considered to be a joke. How about the atheist amongst jews and christians aspect? Nope, that's never tackled either. In fact, Marcus even goes and joins the jewish fraternity, a lazy plot device to get him kicked out of college later.As for the Korean War, it might be the most important part of the narrative but in a roundabout sort of way the likes I have never seen before. Crudely summed up it goes something like this: Young men die in the war; Marcus's father is upset by this and at his son's departure for college; Marcus's father become erratic and temperamental (this is delivered to us secondhand so we don't even feel invested in this part of the story); Marcus's mother wants to divorce him; she agrees not to BUT, and this is where we enter soap opera territory, only if Marcus stops seeing Olivia because she cut her wrist; Olivia leaves suddenly; Marcus is in distress over this and drops the F bomb in front of the dean; Marcus doesn't attend a mandatory chapel session once and gets kicked out of college; he goes to war and dies. Still with me? If these events seem like they don't connect naturally to one another it's because they don't. The Korean war is used as a means to an end rather than as having any meaningful impact on the characters throughout the film.For the entire duration of my viewing I was waiting desperately for it to pick up a proper pace, to deal with something more than just the outré reaction of getting a bj on a first date in a car but, sadly, it it never delivered. I will give it this: the title is apt though not for the movie itself but rather for the lingering sensation one gets as the screen fades to black.

There is a very fine and very long scene in the midst of all this that warrants a large portion of the points I have given this between the lead and the Dean of the college he attends. Although it had a good amount of room to be even better, it was a stellar achievement. That and the tragic ending of the hero.But much of it was quite odd.Very long intro of sorts to the college kid Marcus played by Logan Lerman. Several redundant scenes where we are repeatedly shown the same thing. Problems with the parents, which I found to be irrelevant to the story as a whole. The colorful elements of the room mates that went nowhere.But this was the love story between Lerman and Sarah Gadon. Not only did the first date not take place until 40 minutes in, we have no real idea of her until the date, other than she is strikingly pretty. On top of that the character apparently asked for the date off-camera.The first date was intriguing but vague at the same time. She's a bit odd, sure. But then very quickly to the blow job. Now I know it took place in 1951 and there was an element of trying to make him overwhelmed by the actions. But he wasn't until several days after the fact. All in all, I did not buy his apathy, even in that time frame. And she was supposedly mentally unstable, which was never really evident to me. Her scene of being very attracted to him rang false and his continual apathy was false. He was established as inexperienced and would have easily fallen under her spell. But then the whole relationship, although both charming people, was based around quite a lot of hand jobs. Yes, even though the character's mental history was presented, I did not get that from the portrayal, which is the fault of the director. Thus, I was open to a volatile relationship based on passion but was given an odd fixation on hand jobs between two reasonable people. Subsequently they could have cut out the difficulties the mother was having with the kid's father. It had zero relevance to anything, was described completely in dialogue when it should have been shown and took away from the love story. I just kept thinking that the mother should give hand jobs to the father.The device to get our hero kicked out of college and sent to Korea was very false. This kid had established a relationship with the Dean, whose sermons he was required to attend on a weekly basis in order to graduate. But they insisted on having him hire another student to sit in for him (as I knew that would lead to the inevitable). There was a sad poetry to the final outcome but too little, too late.

So much darkness and despair. A young man from a Jewish family goes to college, but he himself is an atheist but attends a conservative college where chapel is mandatory. Boy meets sexually adventurous girl. Boy is unsure what to think of said girl, but continues receiving hand and mouth favors from said girl. Girl jumps down the mental rabbit hole, again boy is unsure what to think or do. By the end of the film I was just glad it was over. Not since Ordinary People have I seen such a large amount of the plot revolve around sexual gratification. Skip It.

I've not read the Philip Roth novel on which "Indignation" is based, but I have read other Roth novels, and I must say that watching this film pretty accurately captured the claustrophobic tone of the Roth with which I'm familiar.Logan Lerman plays a sheltered Jewish boy who experiences his first taste of a larger world when he gets a scholarship to a strict religious college. We're stuck in this kid's head for the entire film, and it's not a pleasant place to be. He's uptight, prudish, and overly-critical, holding himself and others to strict moral codes that have never been tested. He butts heads with the college dean, played by Tracy Letts, who bullies him and makes assumptions about him, but who also exposes some of his very real flaws. It's not a great film, but it is a conversation starter. It's about what happens when a young person realizes that the world doesn't necessarily always work the way he wants it to and being unable to cope with that reality. One of the things I liked best about it is how the movie upends our initial assumptions about the main character. We assume we are meant to sympathize with him and be on his side against the injustice he expects from being Jewish in a Christian school, but instead we realize that he's his own worst enemy and that the greatest threat comes from his own unbending rigidity.Grade: B+