16 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Thursday 26 March 2020

ARTS

Collaboration:JohnTurturroin

‘ThePlotAgainstAmerica’

MaxMcGuinness

Philip Roth’s 2004 alternative history

novelThePlotAgainstAmericais set dur-

ing the second world war. And yet its

portrayal of a celebrity demagogue —

the anti-Semitic aviator Charles Lind-

bergh, who coasts to power on an isola-

tionist platform — seemed to acquire

prophetic resonance with the election of

Donald Trump. The president even

reprised Lindbergh’s slogan “America

First” in his inaugural address.

Still, it would be easy to overstate the

parallels between Roth’s Lindbergh and

Trump. And in the first three episodes

of this six-part adaptation for HBO,

which is expected to air on Sky Atlantic

in the UK later this year, co-creators

David Simon and Ed Burns wisely keep

the focus on Roth’s reimagined vision of

the past while gently amplifying con-

temporary echoes.

The story begins in Roth’s hometown

of Newark, New Jersey in June 1940 as

Hitler’s armies sweep across Europe and

President Roosevelt ramps up aid to

the embattled British. As in the novel,

the action centres on a fictionalised ver-

sion of Roth’s own lower-middle-class

Jewish family.

At first, the future looks bright for the

Levins (as they have been renamed

here) when Herman (Morgan Spector),

an insurance salesman, is offered a

promotion in gentile-dominated Union

City. But he turns it down after encoun-

tering anti-Semitic abuse from a band

of drunken pro-Nazi German-

Americans in the neighbourhood where

he had planned to move with his wife

Bess (Zoe Kazan) and their two young

sons Sandy (Caleb Malis) and Philip

(Azhy Robertson).

There are other ominous rumblings

early on as Lindbergh announces his

candidacy and a local service station

owner (David Pittu) frets about

his brother who has disappeared in

Germany. But Herman remains confi-

dent that the man he dubs “an airline

pilot with opinions” stands little chance

of beating Roosevelt. Meanwhile,

Bess’s elder sister Evelyn (Winona

Ryder) takes a shine to a prominent

widowed rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf

( John Turturro).

The latter soon emerges as the chief

villain here when he endorses Lind-

bergh (Ben Cole) — who remains a back-

ground presence — and becomes the

candidate’s conduit to American Jewry.

With his faintly incongruous southern

drawl and imperious self-regard, Ben-

gelsdorf represents a highly believable

collaborator, who sublimates his ego-

tism within the conviction that he is act-

ing in his people’s best interests. Once

Lindbergh capitalises on antiwar feeling

to win a landslide victory in November

1940, Bengelsdorf is rewarded with a

plum position as head of the “Office of

American Absorption”, tasked with

helping his fellow Jews “assimilate” into

American society.

At the heart of Bengelsdorf’s

Orwellian mission is “Just Folks” — a

programme that dispatches Jewish chil-

dren, including an enthusiastic Sandy

(despite his parents’ protestations), to

spend the summer living on farms in

the heartland.

That device highlights the virtues of

ThePlot’s understated approach to alter-

native history. There is no full-blown

fascist takeover here. The mini-series

instead depicts a progressive unravel-

ling of civilised norms behind a facade of

relentlessly chipper patriotism, which,

at least initially, leans more heavily on

intimidation than violence. Clever use

of newsreel footage and radio broad-

casts further contributes to a height-

ened sense of plausibility.

Simon and Burns’s previous work,

such asTheWire, tends to focus on the

crippling determinist effects of dysfunc-

tional institutions. InThePlot, contin-

gency and individual agency assume a

larger role. Whereas Bengelsdorf and

Evelyn choose collaboration, Herman’s

wayward, semi-criminal cousin Alvin

(Anthony Boyle) goes to Canada to

enlist in the fight against Nazism. All the

central characters come to be defined

by how they confront the political catas-

trophe unfolding around them. To para-

phrase Trotsky,ThePlotillustrates that

even if you are not interested in politics,

politics is interested in you.

HBO

Subtledramaplotsanalternativehistory

TELEVISION

The Plot Against America

HBO

aaaae

T

he Invisible Manthat we’ve

all seen before — the ghoul

with the face of white band-

ages — gets a single, doleful

wink in the new remake of

the horror classic, a passing figure in a

hospital corridor. By then, we’re already

deep into a hyper-modern spin on the

ripe old chiller. After the fall of Harvey

Weinstein comes the reinvention of a

monster, a #MeToo nightmare.

The raw material is all there. As in

James Whale’s 1933 hair-raiser, the man

in question is a maniac. So he was too in

the mind of HG Wells, from whom the

film also nabs the usefully vague profes-

sional field of “optics”. What’s novel is

director Leigh Wannell’s own area of

interest — less the fiendish science of the

villain or even the villain himself than

the woman who falls prey to it and him.

In black and white, the female lead was

the underused Gloria Stuart, tearfully

devoted. Now, the heroine is Elisabeth

Moss, cast as Cecilia Kass — anything

but lovestruck, and with good reason.

We meet her in the act of escape, flee-

ing her partner Adrian Griffin and his

World of Interiors mad scientist’s castle,

all open-plan living space and home lab-

oratory. In the dead of night she makes a

bolt for it, down the pristine hallways in

perfect silence, out into the grounds,

over the wall, into the woods, to free-

dom. Until, weeks later, she senses a

familiar presence — one she can’t see

but knows with cold assurance is right

there. Such is the film at its smartest, the

disbelief Cecilia faces mirroring that

which countless women have dealt with

down the years reporting abusive part-

ners. And Griffin’s abuse, we learn, is

what Cecilia has long been victim of.

The cocktail of genre schlock and

social conscience is not unproblematic.

If the eternal appeal of the title charac-

ter is bound up with sheer giddy visual

fun, you may find yourself squinting

uneasily in the scenes of violence

against women. (That said — spoiler —

Cecilia provesgifted with a skillet and a

hidden target.)

Less queasy but jarring too is the

general look of the film — all cold grey-

blues and closed-circuit surveillance —

insistently calling to mind the kind

of cheapo thriller that would have done

asked the question itself, the film offers

further clarification. “There is no sex in

Georgian dance,” insists Aleko (Kakha

Gogidze), a glowering Tbilisi choreogra-

pher. “This isn’t the lambada,” he adds

for emphasis. Among his pupils is

Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani), skinny and

feline with a giveaway grin that would

make him the world’s worst poker

player. As she has been since they were

children, his dance partner is the dark-

eyed Mary (Ana Javakishvili). Are they

an actual couple? Mary isn’t sure her-

self. More or less, says Merab. Shortly, a

newcomer joins the group — Irakli

(Bachi Valishvili), complete with raffish

earring. Aleko scowls still harder.

For all the high art house trappings,

the tone is human. The film has a hawk-

eye for the detail of a dancer’s life, toes

cracked like knuckles before rehearsals

— and for Merab’s routine, humdrum to

him but brought brightly to life. Home is

a cramped flat shared with his mother,

grandmother and goonish older

brother. Tbilisi’s meaner streets lie

beyond. Money is never other than

tight. Rehearsals with Aleko are too

stressful to provide much escape, but an

actual career in dance would offer new

horizons, hinted at by Mary’s treasured

stash of British cigarettes. To the point:

auditions for the National Ballet are

announced for select male dancers,

Merab and Irakli among them. A tale of

pirouetting rivalry appears to loom.

Working with cinematographer Lis-

abi Fridell, Akin has a habit of switching

focus between characters in a single

shot, nudging the eye here and there

before coming to rest. So it is that amid

the subplots — and despite the auditions

— Merab finds his grin running off with

him whenever Irakli is around.

Aleko’s students take a trip to the

country, dancing for the joy of it to

Swedish electropop. Then, for Merab

and Irakli, come snatched glances,

more loaded than even they realise

at first. Soon, theyarean actual

couple — each other’s deepest secret.

The heady rush of illicit romance

could prompt you into memories ofCall

MeByYourName,and it’s true that there

is little up Akin’s sleeve that will actively

surprise you. But here, the stakes are

higher — dangerously high. On screen,

Georgian dance is defined again in a cul-

ture shaped by the Orthodox church,

where tradition can curdle into homo-

phobia. “There is no room for weakness

in Georgian dance,” Aleko tells Merab,

his mood now Vesuvial.

In real-life Tbilisi, that sense of risk

was underscored by the film being met

with violent protests from ultra-

conservative pressure groups. Akin

balances that gravity with a defiant

pleasure in small moments. And in

Gelbakhiani, he has a star of rare agility

even when he is standing still.

Available to watch through on-demand

platformsincludingCurzonHomeCinema,

VimeoonDemandandBFIPlayer.

How time changes everything. A month

ago, the temptation might have been to

gently condescend to the new Disney

adventureTogo: one for the kids. As it

is, the film’s particular breed of old-

school Disneyosity—asweetlyearnest,

action-filled tale of the bond between

man and beast — feels like an ideal tonic.

The story is true, based on the fabled

Alaskan serum run of 1925. We begin in

the outpost of Nome, the local hospital

overrun by diphtheria. The town’s chil-

dren lie ailing; an epidemic is imminent.

The nearest antitoxin is hundreds of

miles away in Fairbanks, between here

and there a storm brutal enough to

defeat the railways, still more so new-

fangled aeroplanes. What that leaves is

sled dog trainer Leonhard Seppala (Wil-

lem Dafoe) and his team of huskies, led

by the dauntless hero of the title. And so

they mush into the white, mostly com-

puter-generated but still vividly cruel, a

place where a fractional wrong turn

takes you to a cliff edge and the thickest

ice betrays you.

The echoes of 2020 are deafening, of

course. (New York surgeon Craig Smith

recently ended a memo to hospital staff

with the words: “Our cargo must reach

Nome.”) The feat of the film, quite

something under the circumstances, is

allowing you to register the likeness but

still lose yourself in survivalist peril for

all the family, with a pinch of cute for

younger viewers. The latter comes with

punctuating flashbacks, to the years

when Togo was a pup of limited prom-

ise. “Undersized and untrainable,” Sep-

pala complains, twice trying to give the

tyke away before he proves himself

unbreakable. The secret sauce of the

film may be that all involved treat it

with respect and sincerity, not least

Dafoe. In return, he gets to riff on Henry

V’s St Crispin’s Day speech, repurposed

for canine ears — a pleasure to deliver,

you suspect, the same way it is to hear.

AvailabletowatchthroughDisney+.

Amonsterforthe

ageof#MeToo

Morethanfear:ElisabethMossin‘TheInvisibleMan’

FILM

Danny

Leigh

The Invisible Man

Leigh Wannell

AAAEE

And Then We Danced

Levan Akin

AAAAE

Togo

Ericson Core

AAAAE

a brisk trade in a 1990s video shop.

But Whannell has an expert way with

the geographies of haunted houses,

given a neat twist by the nature of the

haunting. Now and then, he can be clas-

sically graceful — an unsourced breath

of frozen night air will bring a shudder.

The prize asset is Moss, of course, a

seven-octave actor equally happy with

micro-emotion and goingvery big

indeed. Here, she is obliged to deliver the

stuff of a million acting workshops,

emoting to thin air. Her triumph is com-

municating more than fear alone.

Cecilia’s fury is what you remember as

the credits roll — a blaze of outrage that

spares the movie the sense of opportun-

ism. And next? Well, I’m sure the Bride

of Frankenstein has something she

might like to say.

Available to watch through on-demand

platformsincludingAmazonPrime,iTunes

andGooglePlay.

Your starter for 10: what is Georgian

dance? The simplest answer is the taut,

precisely executed national tradition

that takes a leading role in Levan Akin’s

new filmAndThenWeDanced. Having

Agility:fromleft,GiorgiTsereteli,LevanGelbakhianiandAnaJavakishvili

in‘AndThenWeDanced’

Manandbeast:

WillemDafoe

in‘Togo’

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