Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Winona Ryder, Zoe Kazan, Morgan Spector, Anthony Boyle, Michael Kostroff, David Krumoltz, Azhy Robertson, Caleb Mills, Jacob Laval, John Turturro, Ben Cole, Kristen Sieh, Steven Maier, Billy Carter, Caroline Kaplan, Eleanor Reissa, Philip Hoffman, Graydon Yosowitz, Ed Moran, Douglas Schneider, Bob Leszcak, Lee Tergesan, David Pittu, Russell Posner, David Greenspan, Keilly McQuail, Andrew Polk, Zach McNally, Kimberly Faye Greenberg, Orest Ludwig, Jason Liebman.
The course of history is not only in the hands of fate, but that of the inaction caused by the passive observer, the ones who sit on the side-lines and listen to all the reports but who play no active role in solving the immediate problem that has blighted their lives and caused the world to lurch towards darkness.
History is time viewed from the vantage point of survival, and yet on the turn of one decision, one small event, what we recognise as fact, could well become the detail of truth in another reality.
If John F. Kennedy had survived the assassin’s bullet, would he have gone on to found a political family empire that would been as beloved as he hoped, or which instead would have been the catalyst for the continued cycle of dynastic rule in which the United States of America had fought to overthrow two centuries earlier. Time and history hangs on such moments and it takes a monumental mind full of questions and thought to turn it into a novel of command and such authority that the argument it espouses is not only chilling, frightening, it is deeply troubling and possible.
The television adaption of Philip Roth’s alternative history novel, The Plot Against America, is one such moment where the fate of a nation is changed, history as we know it is torn apart, diverted, the actions of one man captured through the consequence of lies, deceit and indifference by others, is enough to allow modern audiences the possibility of what might happen in our own time if we allow certain facts to be altered and remain unchallenged.
The sense of unease, the parallels with our own time, the wrongs created by allowing a populist, isolationist, fashionable, insular and seemingly strong figure to become president, are all too clear, however, when we add to the train of thought that alternative history exists because Time understands that in each person there is the capacity for both good and evil to exist side by side. It only takes a simple exchange, a trigger, in this case the real life event of Charles Lindbergh’s son being kidnapped, it is not hard to find the pretext of the famed aviator joining the America First Party and thereby allowing Hitler and the Fascists free reign to wreck their destruction on Europe’s Jews with even more impunity.
Whilst there are some obvious changes, small, barely noticeable except in terms of the delivery, between the novel and the six part serial, the exercise of educating viewers and readers to the agony of the moment that comes with knowing one wrong decision by any of us can alter the world forever is rubber stamped, is confirmed, especially when seen through the eyes of the passive observer.
With excellent performances by Winona Rider, Zoe Kazan, Morgan Spector, Caleb Malis and Anthony Boyle, The Plot Against America is not only a warning from an alternative history, it is the shadow in which we must observe that we have become too passive, to entrenched with the notion of keeping out of the minds who would create havoc and commit crimes; only this time we might find the alternative becoming terrifyingly real.
An excellent mini-series, one that has certainly done justice to the works of Philip Roth.
Ian D. Hall