James Schamus has spent most of his career as a tastemaker and acclaimed producer, working with filmmakers like Ang Lee, Michel Gondry and Gus Van Sant during his tenure at Focus Features, establishing the studio as one of the finest indie outlets. Now he’s getting behind the camera, and for his first feature film, he’s tackled an adaptation of a novel by Philip Roth.
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Starring Logan Lerman, Sarah Gadon, Tracy Letts, Linda Emond, Danny Burstein and Ben Rosenfield, “Indignation” chronicles one young man’s journey to college in the 1950s. Here’s the official synopsis:
Based on Philip Roth’s late novel, Indignation takes place in 1951, as Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman), a brilliant working class Jewish boy from Newark, New Jersey, travels on scholarship to a small, conservative college in Ohio, thus exempting him from being drafted into the Korean War. But once there, Marcus’s growing infatuation with his beautiful classmate Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon), and his clashes with the college’s imposing Dean, Hawes Caudwell (Tracy Letts), put his and his family’s best laid plans to the ultimate test.
Reviewing the movie out of Berlin, the Playlist’s Jessica Kiang had very mixed feelings on the picture, but you can judge for yourself when it opens on July 29th. Watch the trailer above.