AMERICAN PASTORAL (USA 2016) ***
Directed by Ewan McGregor

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Jennifer Connelly, Dakota Fanning

Review by Gilbert Seah

As Seymour’s story is told from the points of view of Zuckerman’s recollections and his brother Jerry’s disclosure, two sides of the life story of a hero is portrayed. Seymour (Ewan McGregor) is the all-American hero but something went terribly wrong in his daily life. The trouble with the film is that it does not pin down exactly when this happens or the real deep reason why.

Ewan McGregor makes his directing debut and stars alongside Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning in this ambitious adaptation of Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, about a “perfect” American family that is torn apart by the social and political upheavals of the 1960s. One must give the actor credit for choosing such a dauntless task as a adapting a Roth novel for…