Indignation (2016)

110 min. Director: James Schamus. Cast: Logan Lerman, Tracy Letts, Sarah Gadon.

Marcus Messner of Newark, New Jersey

straight-"A" student

Jewish roommates "cultured" Chicagoan Bert Flusser () playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Ohio native Ron Foxman ()

Olivia Hutton (

"eight thousand moods a minute"

officious Dean Hawes D. Caudwell (Tracy Letts) speaks of "enemies both foreign and native"

"you go around guys like him, Marcus. You keep your mouth shut, your ass covered, smile. And then, you do whatever you like. Look, don't take everything so seriously."

assimilation and conformity

his parents turning into nervous wrecks

anti-Semitism

Lerman wears a wary look

nervously overprotective parents

consequences of actions

less than 80 Jews in a campus of 1400

Jewish fraternity

"go along to get along" the Puritans' "half-covenant

sheltered young intellectual simultaneously feeling stifled and collecting new experiences away from home at college (escargot and blowjob)

overthinks the blowjob

she pegs him as "so intense" (twice)

atheist

on scholarship

Winesburg College class of 1955

chapel attendance requirement

unsettling, subtle tragedy

gorgeous production design and cinematography

sexual repression and confusion

his strained relationship with his parents also plays into his reaction to authority figures

narration and symbolism that's clearer in retrospect

more than fifteen-minute scene

passive-aggressive turns increasingly aggressive

invokes Bertrand Russell essay "Why I Am Not a Christian"

subtly fosters identification with brief P.O.V. shots