Indignation

This film was good in many ways.
First of all, you feel like you are truly being transported back to 1951. The actors really embrace their roles and master the mannerisms of the time period.
Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman) is a brilliant student who has overprotective parents, namely a paranoid father (Danny Burstein) who owns a butcher shop where Marcus works part-time. It is during the Korean War and of course both of Marcus's parents, Esther (Linda Emond) is his kind and silently strong mother, are thrilled that he will avoid the draft.
But he has his struggles in college, not in his classes or his after hours job at the library. His personal life is up for debate. He does finally have a date with the beautiful and older Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon) who is fairly liberal with her sexual favors. He moves to a drab single room and doesn't want to join the Jewish fraternity, opting to focus on his studies.
Then, he meets with the Dean (Tracy Letts) in one of the best scenes I have seen recently. It is a long scene where the Dean wishes to know about his personal life and why he objects to chapel, as Marcus, though raised Jewish, is actually an atheist. The scene is brilliant with every sentence reacted to perfectly and you can see Marcus getting ill in front of your eyes, before he collapses and wakes up in the hospital minus his appendix.
His mother does come to visit and wishes to divorce her increasingly verbally abusive husband which breaks Marcus's heart. Esther is less than thrilled that Marcus is seeing someone who attempted suicide. She agrees to stop the divorce proceedings if Marcus doesn't see Olivia further. Which he reluctantly agrees to do.
However, Marcus loses interest in his classes when he doesn't see Olivia around anymore and even opts to meet with the Dean again where he is grilled about his sexual life. He also learns that Olivia had a nervous breakdown and is back in the mental hospital. In one of the most shocking moments that had the whole theater gasping, Marcus tells the Dean to well, it certainly isn't family friendly but well deserved.
That isn't what gets him kicked out of college. His proxy is caught attending chapel for him and thus is forced to go to Korea. Where he is killed, bringing the film back to the beginning.
It ends just as it started with an elderly, but married Olivia staring at the wallpaper with a vase of roses, just as she arranged in his hospital room.
The film is well-done though I wish the ending had been happier but life has a series of interesting consequences for people's actions. Still, the acting is fantastic with both Letts and Lerman delivering Oscar-worthy performances, plus the set and costumes are totally authentic and it cannot be easy performing in a period piece, yet they do so effortlessly. Grade: A-