OCS CITY – TUESDAY, MARCH 17 AT 8:40 P.M. – SERIES
This is not the place to seek comfort. We will of course find in The Plot Against America the cozy interiors of the American middle class in the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the languid accents of the tunes of musicals. But readers of Philip Roth’s novel from which this terrible (like a vengeful god) mini-series is adapted already know, it is not fruitful – the United States finding its way back to prosperity after the Great Depression – that it is here, but of the worm, a larva which will give birth to a filthy beast.
We will find, throughout these six hours of ordinary terror, the essential and the essence of Roth’s book. In the 1940 American presidential election, the isolationist tendency of the Republican Party led aviator Charles Lindbergh, an avowed Nazi sympathizer, to the candidacy. The latter prevails over Franklin Delano Roosevelt, interrupts military aid to the United Kingdom and brings into his cabinet notorious anti-Semites, foremost among them the industrialist Henry Ford.
Hellish vision of an America on the verge of fascism, The Plot Against America is also an autobiography. The central character of the novel is called Philip Roth. He is a little boy of barely 10 years old who, like the writer, grew up in Newark, New Jersey. This dimension is, of course, absent from the series of David Simon and Ed Burns, as indicated by the change of surname of the child and his family, who became the Levins.
Family life details
Remain a benevolent and meticulous attention to the details of family life. The ups and downs of the couple formed by Herman (Morgan Spector) and Bess (Zoe Kazan) Levin, the tension between the father and Sandy (Caleb Malis) the eldest son, are like the lines of a seismograph recording the tremors of a sick world. No attachment, no allegiance, is immune to the poisons of anti-Semitism and authoritarianism.
While nothing predisposed them to it, the Levins are found very close to the eye of the storm.
At the opening of the first episode, the story has not yet taken a tangent. We are in 1939, Poland has just fallen. In the neighborhood where the Levins live, we support Roosevelt. Through the cinematographic news and the radio, one perceives the rise of isolationism, the increasingly strident speeches against the entry into war.
And then Charles Lindbergh is elected. While nothing predisposed them to it, the Levins find themselves very close to the Eye of the Storm. Evelyn Finkel (Winona Ryder), Bess’s sister, catches the attention of Rabbi Bengelsdorf (John Turturro), an ambitious cleric accepting the role of Jewish surety for an anti-Semitic administration, which makes her his wife and collaborator. Defying the agreements guaranteeing American neutrality, signed by Hitler and Lindbergh in Reykjavik, Alvin Levin (Anthony Boyle), Herman’s nephew, enlisted in the Canadian army and left for Europe. And little Philip (Azhy Robertson) wakes up every night after dreaming about Nazis.
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