Ewan McGregor’s had a venerable career so far, one he’ll likely continue for years to come. But clearly yearning for new challenges, the actor has turned to filmmaking and is making his feature-length directorial debut with an adaptation of “American Pastoral,” a 1997 novel by the great Philip Roth.
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Starring Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Connelly, McGregor himself, Uzo Aduba, Molly Parker and Rupert Evans, the story is set in postwar America, and centers on a man who watches his seemingly perfect life fall apart as his daughter’s new political affiliation threatens to destroy their family.
Fanning plays the daughter, McGregor the father and Connelly his wife. McGregor adapting Roth isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the celebrated author, but it’s so unexpected, perhaps it will work. Here’s the official Amazon synopsis:
As the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our century’s promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth’s protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father’s glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede’s beautiful American luck deserts him.
For Swede’s adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager — a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth’s masterpiece.
Written by John Romano, Lionsgate has set the film for an October 21 release date, which could make it perfect for something like a debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. In the meantime the first teaser trailer has arrived and you can watch it below, via Vanity Fair.