Just when you thought “Mad World” had retired, that nobody else would cover it and nobody else would stick it in a movie trailer, well, here we have it: “Mad World” is the star of this new trailer for American Pastoral, a film that is also Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut.
The film is an adaptation of Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, which was released in 1997. It concerns Seymour Levov (McGregor), who is a successful businessman in a small town. He’s Jewish, but is nicknamed “the Swede” because of his good looks (of course) and he marries a woman named Dawn (Jennifer Connely). Because of this, and his general success, he’s admired by a lot of folks, but hated by his younger brother, Jerry (Rupert Evans). Eventually, as the Vietnam War takes place and initiates unrest among Americans back home, Seymour’s daughter, Meredith (Dakota Fanning) commits an act of domestic terrorism, setting off a bomb and going into hiding. This, of course, explodes Seymour’s life, and everything unravels from there.
Luckily, very little of this is explained concretely within the trailer, as it stays on the side of ambiguity, focusing more on mood (and “Mad World”) than actual plot details. Which isn’t a problem, especially when it’s as gorgeous as this.
Watch the trailer below. American Pastoral is due out October 21.