An All-American college star and his beauty queen wife watch their seemingly perfect life fall apart as their daughter joins the turmoil of '60s America.An All-American college star and his beauty queen wife watch their seemingly perfect life fall apart as their daughter joins the turmoil of '60s America.An All-American college star and his beauty queen wife watch their seemingly perfect life fall apart as their daughter joins the turmoil of '60s America.
- Awards
- 1 win & 3 nominations
- Merry (8 Years Old)
- (as Ocean Nalu James)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaPaul Bettany was cast as Swede, Jennifer Connelly as his wife and Evan Rachel Wood as their daughter. All dropped out in 2004, after the movie spent many years in development. After 10 years, Connelly returned in the lead role, alongside Ewan McGregor.
- GoofsThe newspaper's masthead identifies 1970 as it's "141th Year." Should have been "141st Year."
- Quotes
[last lines]
Nathan Zuckerman: [narrating funeral] You come at people with an open mind, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You get them wrong while you're with them, or you tell someone about them and get them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive. We are wrong. About the Swede, how life was going to open its arms and shower blessings upon him, I was never more wrong about anyone in my life.
- SoundtracksComes A-Long A-Love
Written by Al Sherman
Performed by Kay Starr
Courtesy of Capitol Records, LLC
under license from Universal Music Enterprises
Couple of comments: this movie is the directing debut of actor Ewan McGregor, who also plays the lead role of Swede. The movie is the big screen adaptation of the Philip Roth book of the same name. I have not read the book, so I can't comment how closely (or not) the movie follows the underlying book. I had seen the trailer of the movie several times, and thought it looked very promising and intriguing. As it turns out, McGregor seemingly couldn't make up his mind whether this was going to be a psychological family drama, or a missing person crime thriller, or both. In the end, it tries to be both but fails to be compelling, including resulting from several improbable plot twists. It certainly isn't because of the lack of acting talent. McGregor is okay, but Jennifer Connelly as his wife Dawn is outstanding (at some point she goes into a minutes-long monologue against Swede, with devastating effect. Daughter Merry is played by several actresses (as she grows up), but the bulk of the role is done by Dakota Fanning, who seems weirdly "off" for this role. Last but not least, there is another great orchestral score from Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat.
"American Pastoral" opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati, and the Saturday matinée screening where I saw this at was attended nicely. Maybe others were, like me, intrigued by the movie's trailer. I wonder of the word-of-mouth will be positive enough to keep this movie playing in theaters very long. Yet there are enough strong moments in it that I might suggest you check out "American Pastoral", be it in the theater, on Amazon Instant Video, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.
- paul-allaer
- Nov 5, 2016
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Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official sites
- Languages
- Also known as
- El fin del sueño americano
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $544,098
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $149,038
- Oct 23, 2016
- Gross worldwide
- $2,063,436
- Runtime1 hour 48 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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