American Pastoral (2016)

very weak, unfortunately

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

The first must-see film of the year.

In every way the film tastes a little. If he did not have the actors he has, it could be a movie for television. It is too long and flat Ewan would be very busy with other things, I imagine, because his interpretation is tremendously flat. I do not think any parent who cares what worries this, this so quiet. Jennifer is not bad, but her role is minor.He has a photograph that is neither good nor bad. Does not stand out for anything.Directing the truth I did not like it. It is slow, repetitive, does not put you in the story, you should get a lot and also do not know to have the camera.If it were not for the actors that it is, I do not think anyone would see it

I have seen in many ways better films. But this story has surprised me in shocking way. I feel like naked, because this could happen to me and before seeing this movie I did not know this. How unbelievably easy is to be blind and not to be aware of it in time. How difficult is to see thinks which are so different from what we are use to see.

The reasons I decided to watch this.Ewan McGregor's debut as a director. - Jennifer Connelly.I gotta admit, I'm not familiar with Philip Roth or his work. At all. My understanding of his status in American literature of the 20th century is superficial at best. Having said that, I'm convinced (without ever having read the book) that the movie leaves a lot of stuff out from the book. That is why I can only rate this slightly above average. The actors are doing their job, but there's a lot missing here. Many questions unanswered. Many highly improbable outcomes in relation to the daughter and her upbringing, emotional state, actions etc. Starting with not overcoming her stutter, voluntarily or not. Most of the story defies logic in every way. That girl had everything growing up, but instead of wanting to create, she decided to destroy which to me is inconceivable. And no, that scene where the father rejects her in the car and the one where she witnesses a Tibetan set himself on fire on television aren't enough to fundamentally change her and turn happiness into bitterness at a young age. Just doesn't cut it. All in all a nice effort for a first feature. 6.6/10

'I was never more wrong about anyone in my life.'Philip Roth's superb book has passages of language that crystallizes our thinking, our memories, our association with life. In this cinematic transformation the words are placed in the utterances by Nathan Zuckerman, sort of an Everyman as he states in the opening of the film – 'Let's remember the energy. America had won the war. The depression was over. Sacrifice was over. The upsurge of life was contagious. We celebrated a moment of collective inebriation that we would never know again. Nothing like it in all the years that followed from our childhood until tonight, the 45th reunion of our high school class…30 or 40, a gathering of my old classmates would have been exactly the kind of thing I'd have kept my nose out of. But at 62, I found myself drawn to it as if in the crowd of half-remembered faces I'd be closer to the mystery at the heart of things, a magic trick that turned time past into time present'. John Romano adapted Roth's novel American PASTORAL for the screen. Ethan McGregor directs. We all reflect on a time that somehow, though placed in the 1960's resistance against the Vietnam War, is terrifyingly familiar with the mood of the nation at present, again at resistance rallies – and that is the reason it works so well.Seymour 'Swede' Levov (Ewan McGregor) was from the Jewish community and is an All- American sports star in high school. He had everything an American idol can dream of - a the tall muscular young man and high school star athlete but he married a Catholic beauty queen named Dawn (Jennifer Connelly) against his father's (Peter Riegert) advice. Swede later became the successful manager of the glove factory his father had founded, which allowed him to live with his wife in a beautiful house in the New Jersey countryside. Well-mannered, always bright, smiling and positive, conservative but with a liberal edge, what bad could ever happen to him? The couple's stuttering daughter Merry (Hannah Nordberg then Dakota Fanning) is their pride and joy until she steps into the 1960s and becomes an antiwar activist, responsible for bombing a little station, killing the owner in what is a senseless and horrifying change in life direction. Merry leaves home and the rest of the film is a father's search for peace with his distraught wife and community while he ceaselessly searches for his renegade daughter. A difficult film to watch, just as the book was challenging to read. But somehow the mirror it holds up to society as we are currently living it makes the disturbing experience all the more poignant.