Avalon
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Movie Reviews of Avalon
Movie Review: A very fine drama, good plot and story
Summary: 4 Stars
On paper, writer-director Barry Levinson's semi-autobiographical Avalon, which begins with the arrival of Polish Jew Sam Krichinsky (Armin Mueller- Stahl) in the Avalon area of Baltimore, Md., on July 4, 1914, and ends when he is in his dotage on another July 4 sometime in the sixties, is an intellectually crystalline epic about the demise of the extended family, the erosion of traditional American and European values, the growth of alienated suburban culture (organized around television) and the hegemony of materialism.
That's on paper. On screen, Avalon is unconscionably sloppy (the leaves of deciduous trees in Baltimore at Christmas are green on one block, yellow on another and non-existent on a third), structurally amorphous (the movie could end at any time or go on forever, which it seems to do), and gummily sentimental (grandparents and children are psychologically saintly). The lovely moments and fine performances in the picture can't redeem Levinson's technical carelessness - the editing is without rhythm, momentum, or even logic - nor can they compensate for Avalon's ethnographic toothlessness: imagine Mordecai Richler without the bite.
Levinson would have made Duddy Kravitz a mensch.
Avalon is more irritating than most ambitious failures because Levinson, winner of the best directing Oscar in 1988 for Rain Man, is wildly talented, and his two earlier semi-autobiographical films set in Baltimore, Diner and Tin Men, were twin peaks of Proustian purity. Structured lightly but soundly, in the esthetic version of aluminum, they vaulted over the twin valleys of bathos, sentimentality and nostalgia.
Avalon is a bridge made of lead.
But students of performance will want to see it for a quartet of reasons. The first is Armin Mueller-Stahl, the East German actor who came West in the late seventies and has not been within spitting distance of mediocrity since, whether as the tortured politician in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Lola, the complex farmer in Angry Harvest or Jessica Lange's mysterious father in Music Box. As written, Avalon's Sam Krichinsky is fundamentally a grandchild's adoring projection of a grandfather, but Mueller-Stahl's Prussian blue eyes bespeak more depth than the character is permitted to articulate; when the script does become bluntly pedantic, Mueller-Stahl subtly softens the blows. Sadly, even this great actor is done in at the end when he is plastered with outrageously inept old-age makeup. He looks like nothing less than a blue-eyed, Teutonic E.T. about to sing a geriatric variation of Cabaret's Nazi hymn, Tomorrow Belongs to Me: Yesterday Vas Mine.
The second extraordinary actor is Joan Plowright, the British widow of Laurence Olivier; she plays Eva Krichinsky, Sam's Polish-American wife, with a flawless accent, as if she had not done Shakespeare, Chekhov, John Osborne or Peter Greenaway, all of whom she has, of course, enlivened. But technique aside, she follows Mueller-Stahl in toughening up the soft edges and in softening the rough edges of a character verging on caricature; while certainly Jewish, her meddling mother-cum-grandmother is no stage- bound Jewish mother.
The most fully dramatized conflict in Avalon involves the grandparents and their relationship to their son Jules and his wife Ann (and eventually to the young couple's children), all of whom live together. Aidan Quinn, as the cautious and contemplative Jules, and Elizabeth Perkins, as the fun-loving but responsible Ann, complete the foursome of exceptional performances: he infuses an introvert with exterior life and she captures the spirit of femininity in the fifties with eerie exactitude, as if Life had come to life (it's an asset that she looks like the Judy Garland of that period).
Four fabulous musicians, less than fabulous music for them to play: the resonant sequences (an on-going Thanksgiving argument, for example) are regularly intercut with comic schtick, the most egregious instance being the purchase of a television set - would people interested enough in TV to buy one not know that during the day there were no programs? The purchasers sit in front of the box, watch the test pattern, get disgusted, and leave it to the kids. It's a funny bit, but it's fraudulent, and it corrodes Avalon, which is trying to do something new, with the stuff of deja-vu. There are two lines delivered by Eva that express the irritation Avalon engenders: "How many times do we have to hear this story? We all heard it before." Conrad Alton, Filmbay Editor.
Movie Review: Family ties
Summary: 4 Stars
The reviewers are right: This is a splendid film. The acting is extraordinarily good, as is the directing and cinematography. The re-creation of America through the late 1940s and into the early 1950s is painstakingly accurate. Still, one comes away from this very long film with little. The reason lies in the script.
How do wholly secular Jewish family members interact with each other? Levinson's answer: They scream at each other constantly. If you enjoy seemingly endless bickering, hollering, and nastiness, this is the film for you. Despite the ads, the move contains virtually no humor, and there is little to feel good about when the credits appear. Real? Yes. Entertaining? Perhaps, but it helps to be a masochist.
There are three errors in the film involving music. The first is a scene where the hero is playing a violin. The fingers on his left hand don't move. Then there is the older man playing the piano, and his hand movement doesn't appear to match what one hears. In a nightclub scene, a handful of musicians produce a big band sound that had to be recorded by a much larger group. How could the director be blind to such blatant mistakes, since he is so meticulous elsewhere? Well, the film is worth seeing anyway. But only once.
Movie Review: Levinson's Baltimore once again
Summary: 4 Stars
Set in Baltimore in the 40s and 50s, the movie revolves around a large extended family of Polish immigrants. Sam Krichinsky (played by Armin Mueller-Stahl) is the central character who loves to tell the story of his arrival in Baltimore on July 4, 1914. The movie shoots for nostalgia and generally hits the target right on; scenes are bathed in soft colors and blend smoothly into one another. We're shown family reunions, bickerings, good times, hard times - it's almost the universal immigrant story mythologized, so familiar as to be every American's "dream" history. Television is the media at the center of it all, chosen by director Barry Levinson as the grand symbol of the age. The movie is easy and enjoyable to watch and we get lulled right in to it (one wishes at times more risks had been taken with the script and direction). Like that favorite family story told over and over again at family reunions, the movie is reliable and comforting and safe and truthful (mostly): it's the heart of the story with all the messy rough edges carefully pruned away. On that level, the movie is a fine success.
Movie Review: Bittersweet commentary on family life in America
Summary: 4 Stars
Every time I see this movie, the last 20 minutes or so depress the hell out of me and it makes me nostalgic for an earlier time in which I didn't even live. The closeness of the family, the way kids, parents and grandparents all shared the household, the family talks in the living room...it's just such a departure from the way families exist today, everyone in another city, if not another state. Everyone zoning out in front of the tv. It's a downer, but it's so true! The mood and look of the film are beautiful to watch. It's a thoughtful film worth catching.Movie Review: Pleasing but forgettable
Summary: 3 Stars
The Bottom Line:
Avalon is a pleasant-enough movie about an immigrant family in 1950s Baltimore that has nothing really the matter with it except that it's not worth your time: it's slow-moving, leaves few memorable images or scenes in your brain and is just not worth an investment of 7.99 or 2 hours.
2.5/4