In The Plot Against America’s premiere, fascism’s storm clouds gather, slowly but surely
TV Reviews Recap
“I pledged allegiance to the flag of our homeland every morning at school. I sang of its marvels with my classmates at assembly programs. I eagerly observed its national holidays, and without giving a second thought to my affinity for the Fourth of July fireworks or the Thanksgiving turkey or the Decoration Day double-header. Our homeland was America. … Then the Republicans nominated Lindbergh and everything changed.” — The Plot Against America: A Novel, by Philip Roth
Even before writer-producers David Simon and Ed Burns decided to turn Philip Roth’s 2004 alternate-history novel The Plot Against America into a splashy, handsome-looking HBO miniseries, the book had already been drawing some renewed attention from readers and cultural commentators, primarily because of Roth’s eerily prescient vision of a country drifting towards fascism. In the novel, pilot Charles Lindbergh—a bona fide American hero in the eyes of millions—trounces Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election, despite Lindbergh’s past antisemitic comments and his support of Adolf Hitler. The book depicts the Lindbergh years in ways that many have found chillingly familiar, post-2016. In some ways, life just goes on as normal, with all the same petty concerns and small joys that occupied everyone’s time before the election. And in other ways, the nation—and what it stands for—transforms overnight.
The first part of Simon and Burns’ six-episode The Plot Against America adaptation ends before Lindbergh wins; but I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that’s where this story is headed. (It’s pretty much the whole premise of the miniseries, after all.) Instead, “Part 1” mostly sets up what’s to come, introducing the plot’s major players.
As in the book, Lindbergh himself (played by Ben Cole) isn’t a main character. Instead, The Plot Against America is primarily about how one staunchly Democratic Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey adjusts to this new reality, where both their ethnicity and their political leanings are suddenly suspect. Herman Levin (Morgan Spector) is a successful insurance agent, living in a predominately Jewish middle-class neighborhood with his wife Bess (Zoe Kazan) and his sons, Sandy (Caleb Malis) and Philip (Azhy Robertson). The Levins also look after Herman’s stubborn and restless young adult nephew Alvin (Anthony Boyle); and they spend a lot of time socializing with Bess’s spinster sister Evelyn (Winona Ryder).
As the story begins, the biggest dilemma the Levin family faces involves whether or not Herman should take a promotion that will mean both a big boost in pay and a move to the nearby suburb of Union, where they’d be the only Jews on their block—in a neighborhood that includes a German-style beer garden. Meanwhile, there’s some low-level concern around the household about Evelyn’s long-running affair with a married man, which she hasn’t done the best job of keeping secret.
No one though is especially worried about the upcoming election, even after Lindbergh announces he’s running. Herman dismisses him as “an airplane pilot with opinions,” and he reinforces his certainty in Roosevelt’s victory by retreating into his favorite media bubble: listening to Walter Winchell’s radio broadcast, which features a regular lambasting of Lindbergh.
Still, there are some disturbing rumblings on the horizon. The Levins’ neighbors are quick to condemn the Republican nominee for his Nazi sympathies; but they also remember how much they cheered his accomplishments as a pilot, and they express admiration for the way he projects confidence and virility. Sandy, the artist in the family, secretly sketches Lindbergh under the covers in bed at night. And the popular Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf—played by John Turturro with a buttery southern accent, reflecting the character’s South Carolina roots—stands in favor of Lindbergh’s promise to keep America out of the war in Europe, while insisting that the candidate’s previous comments about the Jews were born of an innocent ignorance.
This is where the fiction of The Plot Against America and the reality of America 2020 begin to echo each other, in this portrait of a country where no one’s entirely sure if the person aspiring to become the leader of the free world is really a bigot, or if he just spouts off without thinking. Either way, many of the American people seem willing to live with the tradeoffs, considering “having a strong leader” more important than where he might actually lead them.
I confess that I had some mixed feelings when I first heard Simon would be adapting Roth’s novel. In series and miniseries like The Wire, The Deuce, Generation Kill and Show Me A Hero, Simon and his closest collaborators have insightfully examined how society tends to function as a lumbering machine, resistant to any individual’s efforts to redirect it. This is an idea that runs throughout The Plot Against America, too. After Lindbergh takes command, the mechanisms that keep the country running—from business to education to journalism to basic civic engagement—click right along, largely unchanged, because their stewards find it more profitable to stay the course.
But Roth’s The Plot Against America is also as much a memoir as it is a blow-by-blow report of a world gone topsy-turvy. In the book, the Levins are actually called the Roths, and the changes America undergoes in the Lindbergh era are sometimes just the backdrop to stories about the young Philip’s life in New Jersey in the late ’30s and early ’40s, where little Jewish boys collected stamps and cheered the Yankees and surreptitiously shared whatever they’d heard about girls and sex.
I wasn’t sure how well a clear-eyed cynic like Simon would handle the more warmly nostalgic aspects of Roth’s novel. After the first episode, I’m still in wait-and-see mode. (HBO provided the full miniseries to critics in advance; but since I’m going to be reviewing weekly, I’m watching one episode at a time.)
There are moments where the TV version of The Plot Against America nails the personal perspective and digressive quality of the text, like when Philip’s buddy Earl Axman (Graydon Yosowitz) invites him into his divorced mom’s bedroom to gawk at her underwear. But at other times, Simon’s usual matter-of-fact approach feels inadequate, as in the scene where a neighbor knocks on the Levins’ door, collecting donations for the cause of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In the book, this prompts the thesis statement Roth delivers at the start of the first chapter—which I’ve quoted atop this review. On TV, the meaning of the moment is less obvious.
At the same time, Simon and Burns (and the episode’s crew, including director Minkie Spiro) do make welcome concessions to the television medium’s episodic structure, including ending the “Part 1” with a moment unlike anything in the early chapters of the novel: a tense sequence cross-cutting between Herman in a movie theater watching the latest depressing war news and Alvin and his hoodlum pals beating up drunks outside the Union beer garden. This is a point in the larger story where adding a sense of urgency and context matters. It’s a smart place to reset, just before the election.
Some of the best moments in this first The Plot Against America episode though are some of the smallest: little bits of character development and scene-setting that serve the larger narrative in subtle ways. I’m thinking here of Bess apologizing to Evelyn for the way her sister has had to take care of their mother for most of her adult life, to which Evelyn shrugs says something that’s a major theme of The Plot Against America: “It’s just the way things worked out.”
And then there’s the opening scene of this miniseries, which is straight from the novel: a group of kids in the street playing a dodgeball-like game called “I Declare War,” where they each pretend to be a country and take turns allying against each other. It’s a bookend of sorts to the scene at the end of Alvin literally attacking German-Americans. But it’s also a reminder that even as the world slides into violence and chaos, kids are still kids, and some things don’t change. That’s a truth at once reassuring and mortifying.
Stray observations
- It’s probably no coincidence that a show co-produced and co-written by former newspaperman David Simon would feature so much printed material in its depiction of the distant past. There’s a lot of reading going on, from Action Comics to the daily paper. And those newspapers are so huge! I miss the days of papers you had to hold at arms’-length.
- You may recognize the actor playing young Philip from Noah Baumbach’s recent Oscar-nominated dramedy Marriage Story. He plays Henry, the grumbly son who has trouble reading. This series couldn’t have been shot too long after Marriage Story, and yet he already looks so much older. Sunrise, sunset, and whatnot.
43 Comments
My buddy’s aunt makes $64/hr on the computer. She has been unemployed for eight months but last month her pay check was $12716 just working on the computer for a few hours. read the article ———————Lifestylesreview.com
You may recognize the actor playing young Philip from Noah Baumbach’s recent Oscar-nominated dramedy Marriage Story. According to IMDb, he’s also the Wells for Boys kid.
And poor little Ilia who discovers his parents murdered in The Americans! That’s where I recognized him from at least.
That’s one of my favorite SNL skits of recent times.
it’s pretty great!
Sandy, the artist in the family, secretly sketches Lindbergh under the covers in bed at nightI think we can all relate to that time in a young woman’s life when she secretly sketches presidential candidates under the covers in bed at night. LMAOHonestly, I can’t think of a better example of how insanely out of touch the writers and readers of “literary fiction” already were by 2004. I mean, that pull quote at the top is just terrible. It’s beyond parody.
This sounds pretty good and I’ll probably watch it. For me, a big step, as while “Plot Against America” is my second-favorite Roth book, “American Pastoral” was my favorite, and that being the case I decided early on that I would steer way clear of the movie (and from everything I heard it sounds like I was right).
I love American Pastoral, but couldn’t bring myself to read this. I’m just too offended by the idea that th the way it seems to ignore the contemporary plight of southern blacks and Japanese Americans. Am I wrong? I would love be convinced that I have misunderstood and should read it.
I don’t think I could watch this now. Hits too close to home with this current administration and especially it’s enable supporters.
This show is excellent. Full stop. But are the newspapers in the show really any larger than the ones today? They look like normal broadsheets to me.
I would’ve never guessed they were, but damn if they aren’t. And a pretty big difference at that.
If they ever do a biopic on the Rosenbergs, Zoe Kazan would be a dead ringer for Ethel.
…but I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that’s where this story is headed. (It’s pretty much the whole premise of the miniseries, after all.Oh I’m sure someone will post here at some point that this is a spoiler.
Not a criticism of the show, but I won’t watch it. Read the book which was disturbing enough.Under the right conditions it could happen here. Although there are a couple of ethnic groups that would go first. But anti-Semitism is right up there.It’s funny (peculiar not ha ha) how much the Christian Republican right loves Israel but hates Jews.Don’t bother to troll me I won’t be reading reply comments.
The Christian Republican right loves Israel and Jews. It’s the left who hate Jews. And I’m a Jew, so I would know.
Culturally so am I. But the left also loves Jews, it’s Israel’s settlement policy that they hate. Unless you are going to go the extreme left. In which case, I would bring up the extreme right.Perhaps instead of Christian Republican right I should have said Christian alt-right.
A mostly fair view. I will say that the alt-right are in no way Christian, regardless of what they claim.
But at other times, Simon’s usual matter-of-fact approach feels inadequate, as in the scene where a neighbor knocks on the Levins’ door, collecting donations for the cause of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In the book, this prompts the thesis statement Roth delivers at the start of the first chapter—which I’ve quoted atop this review. On TV, the meaning of the moment is less obvious.Uh, was it less obvious? First of all, from a visual perspective, the man collecting money for Palestine is so visibly Jewish, in contrast to the assimilated Levin family, all wearing standard 30s/40s fare. Secondly, the incident prompts the youngest son to say, “I thought America was our homeland,” and his confusion is immediately dismissed by his family, who acknowledge (to my recollection) no sense of confusion about where they feel at home. It actually felt a little heavy-handed to me.
It’s a weird choice especially since Zionism was a movement that came from secular Jewish communities (aka the exact opposite of the Jews who are visibily Jewish). Religious (visible) Jews didn’t like how atheistic and socialist Zionism was and did not jump on board until much later.
Yes, that also struck me. I’m really interested to see how the “Jewish homeland in Palestine option” plays out in this story.
Yup. Without Stalin there’s no Israel, as David Ben Gurion said. “Without these weapons, we would have not survived.”Jerusalem, 1953.
Strong start. The writing is a little heavy-handed and expository, but that seems to me to be nod to the era, and a necessary device in a country full of people who haven’t studied much history. Most of us have an opinion of times back then that is shaped by entertainment, and this has the feel of an old movie. Couldn’t they just live somewhere besides Union? It was like that was the only house in New Jersey and it was around the corner from a 24/7 fascist beer hall.
Although I probably won’t be able to watch it – this subject matter is just too close to home for me, a Jewish American woman with plenty of inherited family trauma – I’m really interested to see how Jewish characters are presented on screen. Too much of the time we’re Larry David-type caricatures or sneering bankers and lawyers.
“Sunrise, sunset, and whatnot.” – Not sure if you meant it that way, but quoting “Fiddler on the Roof” is fitting for this review.
Hopefully some day Jewish Americans can gain some sort of access to the entertainment industry and try and end such negative portrayals.
It’s almost like the Jewish people in the entertainment industry are Jews in name only and are much more concerned with pushing secularism, along with the rest of the entertainment industry. And before anyone jumps down my back, I am a proud RELIGIOUS Jew.
Probably time to point out that the great American hero Charles Lindbergh was not a fascist in any way, shape or form – and that the America First movement was an *anti-war* movement open to all except “Nazists, Fascists, Communists or members of other groups that place the interests of any other nation above those of our own country”. It was supported by future presidents John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford, future Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, future Senator Peter Dominick and Sargent Shriver among millions and millions of others. America had just previously participated in the global calamity of WWI and the mood of the entire country was, quite sensibly, anti-war. Once America was attacked Lindbergh, being a great patriot, immediately sought to re-enlist. This was blocked by FDR who refused to utilize the services of the greatest pilot in the world in a vindictive effort to punish Lindbergh for not wanting to send American boys to die in a foreign war in which America had no part at the behest of the military-industrial complex. Not to be deterred by a mere president Lindbergh went to the pacific theater as a consultant where he flew fifty combat missions as a civilian. The idea that Philip Roth, of all people, would have done so much in that great struggle is so ludicrous as to be obscene.
Almost like the U.S. government is fascist scum all the way through! Now go have Mommy change your diaper.
Does anybody else find the sister casting interesting? Winona Ryder is certainly more age appropriate for Morgan Spector, but then again she also is for John Turturro, so … I don’t know. My guess is Zoe Kazan purposely avoids any roles that appear right wing given family history.
My guess is Zoe Kazan purposely avoids any roles that appear right wing given family history. What family history?
Elia Kazan, her great or just grandfather, one of the more famous namer of names?
Also, how do you do that thing on Kinja where you can pull out a part of a quote like that?
In the toolbar (the little Aa icon above the text field) there’s a formatting icon that looks like quotes. The alt text on the icon is “blockquote.” That formats the quotes that way (only available on desktop, you won’t see it on mobile).
Communism is evil.
Good thing we live in a country with a system that isn’t at all as bad or evil as communism, innit.
I think it’s safe to say Lindbergh and his 2020 real world counterpart are bigots, monsters, con-men and racists and liars – among other worse things. Just like Hitler. Just like any White Supremacist.
watching the episodes one at a time is really the only way to do it, as watching them all at the same time would be crazy. i think you mean one per week.
I know you’re being pedantic, but you still cracked me up. Good job.
Pretty thin premise. Lindbergh did oppose getting into WWII (until the Pearl Harbor attack). And in an address he did identify Jews (and the British and the Roosevelt administration) as the three groups pressing for involvement in the war. But he never publicly identified himself as a Nazi. So linking him to fascists at this late date is just facile revisionism if not slander. Philip K Dick, at least, had the integrity to use entirely fictional characters in Man in the High Castle to convey the same “it could have happened here” theme.
If we’re using modern parallels, the Orange Burlap Sack currently in the White House isn’t an actual Nazi in the strongest sense… But he sure is #1 with Nazis. Which basically males him a Nazi.
Nazis hate him for being pro Jewish.
If you’ve read the book, you know the entire story is told through the eyes of the youngest brother (Philip). I wondered how the writers were going to deal with this. It seems they’ve ignored it and opted for an “adult” version. One of the greatest aspects of Philip Roth’s story is the perspective of what’s happening in his family, his neighbourhood, and in society as seen by a nine-year old.
I don’t honestly remember the book well enough to judge how closely this follows the plot line. However, HBO doesn’t seem to have spared any expense in recreating the sights and sounds of the era. The scenery and cinematography is stunning and worth watching aside from any other virtues of this series.
Are AV Club readers so unintelligent that they think this show is a historical re-enactment, rather than a work of fiction? Pretty embarrassing.