American Pastoral
Short description
Seymour "Swede" Levov seems to have everything: he was a celebrated high school athlete, he runs the glove factory his father started, and he is married to Dawn, a former beauty queen. The family lives in comfort in postwar America, but the social and political upheavals of the 1960s unsettle that settled existence. The crisis becomes personal when the Levovs' teenage daughter, Merry, is accused of a bombing and disappears, leaving her father to search for her and to reckon with what has become of his family and his country.
The film is based on Philip Roth's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Ewan McGregor directs and plays the lead, with Jennifer Connelly as Dawn, Dakota Fanning as Merry, and David Strathairn, Peter Riegert and Rupert Evans in supporting roles. It is the second feature McGregor directed, following Tube Tales. John Romano wrote the screenplay, and Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi and Andre Lamal produced.
Released in October 2016, the film runs 108 minutes. Its 10 million dollar budget was not recovered at the box office, which came to about 2 million dollars worldwide. Viewers rate it modestly: 6.1 out of 10 on IMDb from roughly 19,000 votes and 6.2 out of 10 on TMDB from a smaller sample. A critics' rating of 4.9 out of 10 from 123 reviews sits below both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Ewan McGregor's directorial debut.
- For the novel on which the film is based, its author Philip Roth received the Pulitzer Prize in 1989.
- The film's script was written back in 2006.
- Paul Bettany was cast as the Swede, Jennifer Connelly was chosen for the role of his wife, and Evan Rachel Wood for the role of their daughter. Work on the film dragged on for so long that all three actors left the project in 2004. Ten years later, Connelly returned to the project and played the wife of the main character, played by the film's director, Ewan McGregor.
- Director and lead actor Ewan McGregor insisted on regular rehearsals so that the actors could better learn their lines and get to know each other.
- While working on the film, Ewan McGregor honed his accent of someone from New Jersey, repeatedly listening to lines spoken by a native of that state, Ray Liotta, recorded during filming.
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