Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Jennifer Connelly discusses Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut
American Pastoral takes on nothing less than the fragile impermanence of the American Dream
American Pastoral
Matthew Lickona: When Dawn is in the depths of her sadness and misery, she tells the Swede that she should have married one of the nice Holy Cross boys she knew when she was young. Why do you think she stepped outside that Catholic world to marry someone outside the tribe?
Jennifer Connelly: I never thought it was a political statement. I thought that the Swede just embodied everything that was great and good. He broke down all boundaries, so that [the relationship] was beyond categories. He was the symbol of promise and goodness and everything that was healthy and energetic, this All-American larger-than-life figure. They were just in love, and I believe that they had a really powerful relationship for many years.
ML: At one point, the therapist suggests that Merry’s stutter may be a way of avoiding direct competition with her beauty-queen mother for her father’s particular love. What do you think Dawn made of that claim?
JC: I think a lot about the character: what happens in the times in between what we see, what happened to her as a kid growing up. Just to try to have a clear understanding of her as a person. One of the things I found really interesting was the conversation about judgment; the reductive positions we take about one another. When we first see Dawn, she’s a contestant in a beauty pageant. I think it’s an identity and description that follows her around and haunts her, and she struggles to have an understanding of her own value that is distinct from that. I think she absolutely rejects that analysis of the family dynamic when it’s described to her, but it’s projected back on her so often that she doubts herself.
ML: That brings me to the speech she gives the Swede after her breakdown, when she says that all she ever wanted to do was teach music. It’s as if she views her beauty as a curse, because it brought the Swede’s attention. Do you think she always felt that way?
Video:
American Pastoral trailer
JC: I think she’s conflicted. Some of it is true, but not all of it is entirely reliable by that point. I think she’s rewriting their narrative. I think she found value and purpose in her family and her relationship with her daughter. When her daughter rejects her and then disappears, it’s excruciating. It completely dismantles her. Ultimately, it proves unbearable, and I think she kind of tears down whatever is still left standing.
ML: This is longtime actor Ewan McGregor’s debut film as a director. What was that like?
JC: He seemed very confident, and he made very confident choices. But he was also interested in having a collaborative experience with his cast and crew. I think one of the most meaningful ways he encouraged that was in the rehearsals we had every morning. Before we started shooting a scene, we would have completely private rehearsals. For those scenes in the institutions, we literally walked into a room and closed the door, and it would be just the two of us. It was practical stuff: how scenes would be staged, how the blocking would be done. Am I sitting, or am I pacing the room — all those choices. It was nice; on the other end of the spectrum, sometimes as an actor, you come to the set and the director doesn’t want to see you until it’s time to shoot, and there are tape marks on the floor where they want you to stand. They’ve made those decisions for you. [McGregor] was letting the actors show him what they were thinking, then working on it together to make a shape before he decided how to cover the scene. You feel like you have a little more breathing room, you’re a little less inhibited about trying things that you think may not work. You open things up before you have to narrow them down and make choices.
Movie
American Pastoral **
Ewan McGregor's directorial debut (he also stars) takes on nothing less than the fragile impermanence of the American Dream — dreams, after all, being things up from which you must ultimately wake — even going so far as to imply that the seeds of its destruction are sown even as it is achieved. MacGregor plays the Swede, a blond SuperJew who goes from strength to strength in postwar America, eventually marrying beauty queen Dawn (Jennifer Connelly), taking over Dad’s factory, moving to a big house in the country, and raising lovely daughter Merry (Dakota Fanning). And then the ‘60s happen, and all the goodness and right-thinking in the world aren’t enough to bridge the generation gap, or even to preserve a shared idea of civilization. It’s the sort of film you find yourself thinking better of the longer you are away from it, largely because it makes many intelligent choices and portrays many cogent moments, but does so without always conveying the kind of fire and feeling that such choices and moments ought to produce. In the end, it’s too polite and considered a portrait of a rude and chaotic world, but as with most Philip Roth adaptions, there’s plenty to talk about afterward.
ML: I’m thinking of one scene, after your daughter has disappeared, where you’re standing alone in the center of the living room, and the light is kind of glowing off of you, and your posture makes it look like you really are about to break into a million pieces...
JC: We didn’t have a big rehearsal for that. It wasn’t indicated in the script. But it was a feeling that I had that she would be almost not wanting to move, not wanting to disturb anything. I thought that position in the room kind of indicated her state. I remember saying, “I’d really like her to be totally lost within her own space, within her own environment. Like she’s just suspended.”
Here's something you might be interested in.
Jennifer Connelly discusses Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut
American Pastoral takes on nothing less than the fragile impermanence of the American Dream
Jennifer Connelly discusses Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut
American Pastoral takes on nothing less than the fragile impermanence of the American Dream
American Pastoral
Matthew Lickona: When Dawn is in the depths of her sadness and misery, she tells the Swede that she should have married one of the nice Holy Cross boys she knew when she was young. Why do you think she stepped outside that Catholic world to marry someone outside the tribe?
Jennifer Connelly: I never thought it was a political statement. I thought that the Swede just embodied everything that was great and good. He broke down all boundaries, so that [the relationship] was beyond categories. He was the symbol of promise and goodness and everything that was healthy and energetic, this All-American larger-than-life figure. They were just in love, and I believe that they had a really powerful relationship for many years.
ML: At one point, the therapist suggests that Merry’s stutter may be a way of avoiding direct competition with her beauty-queen mother for her father’s particular love. What do you think Dawn made of that claim?
JC: I think a lot about the character: what happens in the times in between what we see, what happened to her as a kid growing up. Just to try to have a clear understanding of her as a person. One of the things I found really interesting was the conversation about judgment; the reductive positions we take about one another. When we first see Dawn, she’s a contestant in a beauty pageant. I think it’s an identity and description that follows her around and haunts her, and she struggles to have an understanding of her own value that is distinct from that. I think she absolutely rejects that analysis of the family dynamic when it’s described to her, but it’s projected back on her so often that she doubts herself.
ML: That brings me to the speech she gives the Swede after her breakdown, when she says that all she ever wanted to do was teach music. It’s as if she views her beauty as a curse, because it brought the Swede’s attention. Do you think she always felt that way?
Video:
American Pastoral trailer
JC: I think she’s conflicted. Some of it is true, but not all of it is entirely reliable by that point. I think she’s rewriting their narrative. I think she found value and purpose in her family and her relationship with her daughter. When her daughter rejects her and then disappears, it’s excruciating. It completely dismantles her. Ultimately, it proves unbearable, and I think she kind of tears down whatever is still left standing.
ML: This is longtime actor Ewan McGregor’s debut film as a director. What was that like?
JC: He seemed very confident, and he made very confident choices. But he was also interested in having a collaborative experience with his cast and crew. I think one of the most meaningful ways he encouraged that was in the rehearsals we had every morning. Before we started shooting a scene, we would have completely private rehearsals. For those scenes in the institutions, we literally walked into a room and closed the door, and it would be just the two of us. It was practical stuff: how scenes would be staged, how the blocking would be done. Am I sitting, or am I pacing the room — all those choices. It was nice; on the other end of the spectrum, sometimes as an actor, you come to the set and the director doesn’t want to see you until it’s time to shoot, and there are tape marks on the floor where they want you to stand. They’ve made those decisions for you. [McGregor] was letting the actors show him what they were thinking, then working on it together to make a shape before he decided how to cover the scene. You feel like you have a little more breathing room, you’re a little less inhibited about trying things that you think may not work. You open things up before you have to narrow them down and make choices.
Movie
American Pastoral **
Ewan McGregor's directorial debut (he also stars) takes on nothing less than the fragile impermanence of the American Dream — dreams, after all, being things up from which you must ultimately wake — even going so far as to imply that the seeds of its destruction are sown even as it is achieved. MacGregor plays the Swede, a blond SuperJew who goes from strength to strength in postwar America, eventually marrying beauty queen Dawn (Jennifer Connelly), taking over Dad’s factory, moving to a big house in the country, and raising lovely daughter Merry (Dakota Fanning). And then the ‘60s happen, and all the goodness and right-thinking in the world aren’t enough to bridge the generation gap, or even to preserve a shared idea of civilization. It’s the sort of film you find yourself thinking better of the longer you are away from it, largely because it makes many intelligent choices and portrays many cogent moments, but does so without always conveying the kind of fire and feeling that such choices and moments ought to produce. In the end, it’s too polite and considered a portrait of a rude and chaotic world, but as with most Philip Roth adaptions, there’s plenty to talk about afterward.
ML: I’m thinking of one scene, after your daughter has disappeared, where you’re standing alone in the center of the living room, and the light is kind of glowing off of you, and your posture makes it look like you really are about to break into a million pieces...
JC: We didn’t have a big rehearsal for that. It wasn’t indicated in the script. But it was a feeling that I had that she would be almost not wanting to move, not wanting to disturb anything. I thought that position in the room kind of indicated her state. I remember saying, “I’d really like her to be totally lost within her own space, within her own environment. Like she’s just suspended.”
Comments