In his directorial debut, Scottish actor Ewan McGregor swings for the fences with an adaptation of Philip Roth's 1997 tome, "American Pastoral." The story, adapted by John Romano, attempts to reckon with the turbulent times of the late 1960s in America, when post-war suburban bliss descended into the chaos of race riots, protests and the sexual revolution. At the center of this whirlpool is one man, trying to hold his family together amidst the madness.
The story of Seymour "Swede" Levov (McGregor) is told through the framing device of a Roth avatar, Nathan Zuckerman (David Strathairn). Attending his 45th high school reunion, he encounters his friend Jerry Levov (Rupert Evans), the younger brother of the high school golden boy. While Nathan assumed life would open up its arms and shower blessings upon the Swede, the turbulent times of the '60s had different plans.
Swede married the local beauty queen, Dawn (Jennifer Connelly) and set up a bucolic life in Old Rimrock, New Jersey, close enough to commute to work at his father's glove factory in Newark. Their daughter Merry (Ocean James and Hannah Nordberg) is much beloved and treasured, but an anxious, brilliant child with a debilitating stutter, and a deep sensitivity to any hurt she or anyone else encounters.
That empathy turns to anger as she comes of age during the Vietnam era, and teenage Merry (Dakota Fanning) is filled with outrage over the injustices of racial discrimination and the Vietnam War, most aggressively toward her beautiful, unenlightened, hopelessly square parents. She rages against the idyllic beauty of her hometown, and when an early morning bomb destroys the local gas station/post office, killing the proprietor, Merry is suspected of the crime and she disappears into what we can only assume might be the world of the Weather Underground.
"American Pastoral" flips the perspective that we are accustomed to seeing of this era. Instead of following the war-protesting, revolutionary flower children who cast off the shackles of suburbia, it's the story of the families and parents they left behind. It's an often unseen take on the issues, but the film refuses to implicate the Greatest Generation for any of their children's dissatisfaction.
The Swede is an all-suffering Job-like character, a fair boss and a loving father and husband, whose only crime seems to be his naivete toward the complications that fate, and a changing country, send his way. The women in his life are beautiful, mercurial creatures set on his destruction, from his sorrowful, raging daughter, to his broken doll wife, who makes herself whole again with plastic surgery and sex. The most cunning, and purely evil vixen is Rita (Valorie Curry), a compatriot of Merry's who manipulates Swede out of his money and dignity, accusing him of being a capitalist oppressor. The Swede loses all of his power and hope in the face of these liberated harpies.
The actors emote deeply and energetically, but there's a disquieting sheen of artifice to "American Pastoral." Digital airbrushing of youth onto the visages of McGregor and Connelly clash with stiff old-age make up on Evans. The film is sumptuously photographed by Martin Ruhe, evoking lush classical Hollywood filmmaking, a Douglas Sirk melodrama. But that approach fails a story this dark and complex. In failing to achieve authenticity, it's impossible to buy in to the myth.
