Indignation Has Some Great Acting But Feels Slight

While his Percy Jackson movie series sputtered out at just two movies, Logan Lerman has still emerged as quite the talented fellow in my eyes. He was phenomenal in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, held his own amidst an all-star cast in Noah and now he further proves his dramatic chops in Indignation, a summer 2016 film that served as one of two 2016 film adaptations of the works of Phillip Roth, the other being the dreadful American Pastoral. Logan Lerman is indeed mighty fine in the lead role of Indignation, even if the rest of the movie around him feels a bit more slight in comparison.

It's not that extremely serious teenager Marcus (Logan Lerman) leads a bad life per se; he's got good parents, a steady job at his dad's butcher job, all that good stuff. But he's feeling suffocated by his overly paranoid father whose anxiety is spurred by Marcus heading off to college in the near future. Once the tightly wound Marcus arrives at college, personal problems don't vanish, as his family is always calling him while his relationship with a girl in his class named Olivia (Sarah Gadon) is a tenuous one due to the sometimes inconsiderate actions of Marcus.

Marcus is a stern man, no question about it. The guy rarely cracks a smile and only loosens up around Olivia in their happiest man. It's interesting, because he's clearly not depicted as deranged or having any kind of disorder, he's just a strict man looking to rebel against the norms placed upon him in this college environment that he feels out of place in. Logan Lerman does a great job handling that kind of austere persona in a way that doesn't indulge in stylized ticks that would run counter with the more realistic atmosphere Indignation is clearly presenting. Plus, he even has a solid rapport with Sarah Gadon (who also turns in strong work as a deeply troubled but enduring human being) in their scenes together.

Lerman particularly thrives in an extended dialogue sequence between him and the Dean of his college (played by Tracy Letts) that easily feels like the highlight of the movie, this great cat-and-mouse game between two individuals entirely reliant on dialogue that gradually builds in intensity between the two quarreling human beings. Seeing as I have not read the Phillip Roth novel on which this movie is based, I have no clue how much of this sequence comes from the text and how much of it is newly created for the motion picture proper, but regardless, it's a gripping scene buoyed by two commanding performances from both Tracy Letts and Logan Lerman.

Unfortunately, much of Indignation doesn't quite have that same gripping spark to it. The rest of the film isn't bad at all, but when looking back on it, my mind goes right back to that Marcus/Dean back-and-forth sequence and a handful other standout scenes while the rest of the production just doesn't wow me. It all remains plenty diverting as a whole but its high points have the unfortunate side effect of demonstrating that too much of the story is preoccupied with more mundane, though very much inoffensive, filler. Maybe that comes a side effect of compressing Phillip Roth's text into a 111 minute movie, I couldn't say being unfamiliar with the work myself, but I can definitively say that Indignation could use a bit more meat on its bone thematically.

At least it's certainly a polished looking production, with the cinematography deserving some notice for making the clever decision to render the college campus Marcus attends full of bright appealing colors and glowing sunlight cascading through the windows to give the campus a pleasing exterior that clashes with the difficult time Marcus is having adjusting to it. Those experiences Marcus has while he struggles to be himself in this environment make for some compelling scenes in Indignation even if the entire movie can't quite stand up quality-wise to, say, the memorable performance its lead actor is immersed in.