American Pastoral (2016)

Directed by: Ewan McGregor | 108 minutes | crime, drama | Actors: Ewan McGregor, Jennifer Connelly, Dakota Fanning, Peter Riegert, Rupert Evans, Uzo Aduba, Molly Parker, Valorie Curry, Hannah Nordberg, Julia Silverman, Mark Hildreth, Samantha Mathis, David Strathairn, Ocean James, David Whalen, Corrie Danieley, David Case

To call Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut ambitious is quite an understatement. The Scottish actor chose his first feature film to adapt Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “American Pastoral”. He also takes the lead role. That makes more sense when you know that the film had been in development for years, and that McGregor had already been cast as Swede Levov. ‘American Pastoral’ never really got off the ground, the director on duty (Phillip Noyce, who would then work with Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly and Evan Rachel Wood) gave up on the project, after which McGregor took over the role of Bettany. He then realized that the dream of directing a film with the directorless ‘American Pastoral’ was suddenly within reach.

‘American Pastoral’ is set in the 1960s. It is, however, a frame story, because the reason for telling the story of this typical, not-so-typical American average family is the school reunion where Nathan Zuckerman (Philip Roth’s alter-ego, who appears in several of his books) hopes Seymour ‘The Swede’ Levov (categorized in the yearbook as “Most likely to succeed”). He doesn’t meet him there, but his brother Jerry, who brings him bad news. Zuckerman is then the one who tells the viewer the life story of Swede.

We get to know the dreams and ambitions of the talented, sporty blond boy in a nutshell. Everything Swede (Ewan McGregor) touches seems to turn to gold. Of course this prettiest kid in school is dating former Miss Jersey/almost Miss America
Dawn Dwyer (Jennifer Connelly). One side note: she is Catholic, the Levovs are Jewish and Swede’s father does not like the marriage. But Dawn is unstoppable and solves this with her strong persuasion. The Levovs are prospering; Not only do Swede take over his father’s successful glove factory, they also buy a beautiful house with lots of land just outside Newark so that Dawn can raise cows and their daughter Merry (played first by Ocean James, later by Hannah Nordberg, and the almost grown-up version by Dakota Fanning) can grow up in a healthy environment.

A small cloud casts the first shadow over the family’s happiness when it turns out that Merry is struggling with speech problems; her stutter is becoming more and more serious. According to the therapist, this is due to the bar that the parents probably unconsciously set. How can Merry compete with the superiority of a mother who almost made it to Miss America? ‘American Pastoral’ mainly shows that love triangle, where Swede and Merry have a much closer bond than the well-meaning, but always wrong-reacting Dawn. The family ties are complex, but the relationship between father and daughter is at the heart of the film. Despite that, Merry is absent for a good part of the film. Due to a terrorist act, she goes into hiding and loses contact with her parents. Dawn appears to have come to terms with this after a suicide attempt and has her sights set on her own future. Swede, however, lingers in impotence and concern and becomes entangled in his search for Merry.

There’s a lot that works in ‘American Pastoral’, but just as much doesn’t. The story continues to fascinate, the pace is good and the acting is fine, but the emotional bond with the people is not really established. This is partly due to the running time and the time span of the film. McGregor and Connelly play both the younger and older versions of their characters, and the film’s story spans roughly three decades. Of course, much of the novel has been lost, but it’s not John Romano’s stripped-down script so much that “American Pastoral” doesn’t make the impression that the book does. The frame story could easily have been omitted here, because Zuckerman’s role is negligible. Swede, Dawn and Merry remain paper characters; they are not well developed and therefore difficult to live with. It is understandable that McGregor did not want to lose his chance to play this role, but as a director he is overplaying his hand with this.