philip roth the plot against america review

But, of course, Roth wrote the book almost two decades ago, so its timeliness is something of an accident. It’s an interesting mix of genres employed to tell a story that could be a little too on the nose, too elbow-nudging with allusions to what’s happening in the country now. The show is part domestic drama, part political thriller. Which is all to say, it seems awfully similar to life in the era of Trump: a celebrity president who has emboldened and empowered some of the worst people in America.

Through these diverging and intersecting narratives we get a map of the whole country in the grip of a terrible epoch: a surge of white nationalism, a rise in authoritarian crackdown from law enforcement agencies, a presiding fear that something even worse is coming. Philip’s aunt, Evelyn ( Winona Ryder), becomes involved with a rabbi loyal to the Lindbergh administration, causing a rift between her and Philip’s fretful, doting mother, Bess ( Zoe Kazan). His proud unionist, lefty father, Herman ( Morgan Spector), grows angrier and more frightened, while Herman’s nephew, Alvin ( Anthony Boyle), wants to go kill Nazis in Europe, illegal under Lindbergh’s pro-Reich foreign policy. Philip’s older brother, Sandy ( Caleb Malis), gets caught up in a sinister scheme to assimilate urban Jews into the Christian, agrarian climes of Real America. There’s young Philip Levin ( Azhy Robertson, from Marriage Story and “Wells for Boys”), wide-eyed and worried as the adults around him unravel under the stress of violent political and social change. We see all this unfold from the perspective of one family, a version of Roth’s own. Out of that disaster of “America First” populism spins a litany of horrors. Roosevelt losing the 1940 election to Nazi-sympathizing American icon Charles Lindbergh. The series, from David Simon and his frequent collaborator Ed Burns, is based on the late Philip Roth’s 2004 novel, which imagines Franklin D. Those wishing to focus on an entirely different calamity than the one we’re living in-and one that’s blessedly make-believe-could turn to HBO’s six-episode mini-series The Plot Against America, a slow-build drama (premiering March 16) that presents an alternate American history, one that in some ways doesn’t feel all that alternate.

Philip roth the plot against america review