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