A shallow Swede and a harrowing test of faith
EWAN MCGREGOR makes his directorial debut in this pleasing enough but rather superficial adaptation of Philip Roth’s 1997 Pulitzer prize-winning novel. McGregor has also cast himself in the lead as Seymour Levov — the Jewish, high-school sporting pride of postwar Weequahic, Newark. Nicknamed the “Swede”, in reference to his Aryan looks and athleticism, he represents the high point of assimilation — the all-American guy.
The story, told in flashback by narrator, 62-year-old Nathan Zuckerman (David Strathairn) — Roth’s sometime alter ego — is framed by a 45-year school reunion where Zuckerman is told that his hero, the legendary Swede, is dead.
We learn that he became a successful businessman, happily married to Dawn (Jennifer Connelly), a Catholic of Irish descent and former beauty queen. “A shiksa, the Swede had done it,” comments Zuckerman. He and his family lived in the country, far from New York’s suffocating, new Jewish suburbs. But social and political turmoil brews beneath the surface of the Swede’s gilded life. By the late 1960s, his beloved teenage, stuttering daughter, Merry (Dakota Fanning) has grown to reject everything her parents represent, becoming politically radicalised, obsessed by the horrors of the Vietnam War. She ends up accused of bombing the local general store, killing a man then disappearing. “Who is she?” Dawn asks. His idyllic existence shattered, it is a question that the Swede then spends the rest of his life trying to answer.
McGregor is miscast as the ill-fated Swede. He has no trace of Jew in him, and comes across as weak, naïve, even bland. We don’t get a sense of the Swede’s angst or inner torment. However, there are some compelling scenes and one of the strongest, which occurs at the beginning of the film, is between patriarch, Lou Levov (Peter Riegert) and Dawn in which he quizzes her about her religious beliefs and intentions as to how she would bring up any grandchild of his. “Baptism is a no.”
Connelly here is suitably strongwilled and feisty. Later, as an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital, Dawn tells the Swede, “You shouldn’t have married me.” One of explorations is into the consequences of marrying out.
This is the second Roth film adaptation of the year — the other,
goes on general release next week — and although McGregor can be applauded for his enthusiasm for the text, the result is a film that never gets beyond the surface. Set during a time of great political unrest in America, including the Newark race riots, it misses the opportunity to explore its historical context. Despite being eminently watchable, wrapped in idyllic, nostalgic cinematography, the film is too two-dimensional to convey the nuanced treatise on America and the American Dream that is so well handled in the book, Perhaps, as has been said of previous attempts to film Roth, is an unfilmable novel — hampered by its dense description and internal prose.
FAITH IS 24 hours of doubt and one minute of hope, claims one of the sisters in Anne Fontaine’s ( compelling and powerful FrenchPolish drama. Based on real events, is set in the bleak, snow-covered landscape of postwar Poland, in December 1945. Much of the film is shot within the cloistered walls of a Benedictine convent, which initially presents as a place of sanctity and serenity.
The film’s protagonist, Mathilde (Lou de Laâge), is a young French doc- tor working with the Red Cross. When a nun runs into a hospital begging for help, Mathilde defies protocol and accompanies her to the convent where she discovers another nun in labour. She soon finds out that several other members of the order are pregnant, all victims of assault by Russian soldiers. “I can still smell their odour,” one of the sisters later tells her. Within their fiercely private world, Mathilde becomes their only hope.
Rational, resilient and compassionate, Lou de Laâge shines as Mathilde. Brief love interest comes in the form of her superior, Samuel, a Jewish doctor whose wry comment, “There are a few of us left,” is one of the reminders of the subtle shadow of the Holocaust.
Despite their outward, identical appearances and common communal purpose, the nuns’ individual characters, personal stories and attitude to faith distinguish each from the other. There is contrast too between the melodic religious ritual and routine of the nuns with the pain of pregnancy and birth. Many are unable to reconcile the brutality that they have suffered with their faith amid anguish and self-torment. Those who are more worldly, such as Sister Maria (Agata Buzek) with whom Mathilde strikes an alliance, are better able to manage the trauma.
Amid a climate of fear and shame, there is conflict played out between the notably resolute and steely Mother Abbess (Agata Kulesza, “Ida”) and Sister Maria. Above all, the Abbess believes that her duty is to protect their secret, with unbearable consequences.
Visually stunning, has an almost painterly quality to it. But at times it is harrowing viewing. Apart from a too tidy ending that errs on the sentimental, this is a superbly cast, standout film about the fragility of faith, which is difficult to let go.