Avalon

source: Avalon

How often may we have said that our own "dull" lives could never be made into a movie? Well, this beautiful film shows that the ordinary lives of an immigrant and his family ARE worth watching. Barry Levinson has helped me see the extraordinary in the ordinary. He has made me look at my own extended family with new eyes. All good films (and theatre and novels, etc.) help us experience and accept the humanness in all of us. Levinson certainly has that special magic touch in AVALON. He has simply, softly, and brilliantly connected us to the human family and its collective hopes and dreams, foibles, stumbles and successes. Bravo! Encore!

Barry Levinson set out to show that the extended family has expired; the nuclear family is dysfunctional and the cause of our urban, suburban, and exurban blight. Stories passed down from generations, the life blood of our ancestors, have ceased to exist, replaced by stories created from whole cloth by unknown writers sitting in sterile offices, working for substandard wages so they can support their families' television viewing habits and other distractions. The wholesomeness of the extended family, so necessary in the Old World, is not functional in the New World. Families break up, separate, and find, upon reflection, that it is the individual relationships which give us joy, and joy is the operational word that describes this work - joy of the innocent child and later, the joy of being loved, cared for, and wanted.

Avalon is one of only two movies that I paid to see in a movie theater, but walked out on. It was putting me to sleep. The movie's pace drags. Maybe it got better in the 2nd half, but you couldn't buy coffee in movie theaters in those days, and I didn't have any caffeine pills.

The third of Barry Levinson's Baltimore trilogy (following ‘Diner' and ‘Tin Men') is a gentle and low key yet hugely impressive film that is a worthy successor to his enormously prosperous and Oscar winning ‘Rainman'. Although adopting the box office disaster strategy – ‘no stars just talent', Levinson manages to create a small yet thoroughly incisive look at the changing face of America and its values during an eventful period in its cultural history. Set in the mid 1950's at the height of the post war economic boom and on the eve of Television's dominance of domestic life, ‘Avalon' looks closely and lovingly at the lives, loves and disasters of three generations of a Polish family in the New World. Opening with a magnificently shot flashback of Mueller-Stahl's arrival in America on July 4th some forty years earlier, the film develops a nostalgic yet never overtly sentimental approach to its subject matter and always keeps its story-line rooted firmly in reality. Although the film has no specific plot or central character, the magnificent Mueller-Stahr emerges as the principal paternal figure trying to keep his increasingly disparate family of brothers, children, nephews, nieces and sundry together amidst the turning tides of cultural change. Joan Plowright plays his stubborn wife who has never learned to fully adapt to the lifestyles in the West, while his son Aidan Quinn is trying desperately to cash in on the American dream that brought his father to those shores in the first place. A tale told with great colour, character and humour and populated with a huge assortment of human characters and memorable moments, 'Avalon' is a beautifully composed piece of American cinema.

This film is a powerful depiction of the loss of innocence experienced by so many immigrants who came to this country, believing it was a veritable promised land. Slowly and subtly, Levinson shows how their once close families are pulled apart by the demands of the culture. From the flight of the middle class to the suburbs and the loss of traditional business values, the transformations our society underwent in the post-war period are captured here with masterful storytelling. Watch how television gradually becomes the center of the home, rather than the family table. The turkey scene, as funny as it is, is profound. The extended family is falling apart, as the geographical distance afforded by the automobile grows. The acting is tremendous. The performances of Quinn, Perkins, Muehler-Stahl and Plowright are worth the purchase alone. But don't miss young Elijah Wood in his first major film role. This movie is one to treasure and revisit year after year--how about at Thanksgiving... :)

Typical Barry Levinson, which means safe, tasteful, lacklustre and fairly dull. An episodic journey across several generations of an immigrant family seeking the American dream. There's lots of syrupy music meant to invoke a vague nostalgia. There are any number of shots clearly intended to impress us with their iconic imagery (like the one shown on the film's poster). It's certainly a quality film, but not one for which I can muster up much enthusiasm. I must not be the target audience for Barry Levinson movies, because I feel the same way about all of them. Grade: B

Avalon is really a beautifully written story and Levinson's cast is excellent. This really is one of the better stories of the American experience. Actually I'd have to say it's the BEST story of the American experience ever brought to film. I say that knowing that it really is the urban Jewish-American experience and not one that is necessarily shared by other groups. I dont care for rigid definitions of the American experience because it can be a vastly differing one. Having said that though, I must still say that Avalon is a wonderful chronicling of an American immigrant family originaly from Eastern Europe who put down roots in the Avalon section of Baltimore. It is refreshing in that New York City is generally credited for this kind of narrative. So much so that it's easy to forget that ethnic communities sprang up in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco etc. Not just NYC. Through the narration of Sam Krichinsky we see his children and grandchildren grow up and he grow old. We are with him when his wife (Joan Plowright)passes away, When his son's business is destroyed by fire, when he argues with his oldest Brother and a great rift divides the Krichinskys forever. we hear his stories of this and that and always he returns to the 4th of July 1914 when he arrived in Baltimore for the first time. Levinson is fantastic as he films what is obviously an idealized representation seen only in Sam Krichinsky's "rose colored" memory of the event. There is so much poignance, sorrow, and love in "Avalon" and small details become deeply profound moments in the life of an elderly man struggling to remember the good times while the world moves on. The closing scene in which Sam's Grandson (now a father himself), with whom he has always had a close relationship, visits him in a nursing home. We know from Sam's state that the end cannot be far. Its a brief scene with little dialogue but it is AWESOME!!!! in the sublime way it conveys it's message. I choke up just thinking about that scene. See "Avalon"!!!

I didn't want to see this film when it came out 30 years ago. I should have respected that decision. No doubt there's an audience for this kind of "nostalgic, warm-hearted" movie. But while the syrupy sweetness of the whole business may not have made me sick, it certainly made me lose interest. Whose immigrant ancestors were like this? Real immigrants are tough people, sometimes vicious; often they don't have it all together. There may be plenty of love in the family, but there's lovelessness too. But Barry Levinson either thinks we grandchildren and great grandchildren may not want to see any of that. Maybe he's right.

Barry Levinson's Avalon is a classic example of an anecdotal film that's overall plot and purpose is too simplistic, and therefore, uninteresting. The cast of main characters of Avalon all belong to the same family, a family that descends four generations from a Jewish immigrant who emigrated to the United States in the early twentieth century. Levinson, who many believe wrote this movie from personal experience, chronicles the story of this Krichinsky family, relating tales of family members of all four generations. What this film lacks is a dramatic, engaging storyline that is driving toward a purpose that serves to summarize all or part of the film and the actions of its characters. It is difficult as a viewer to feel genuine emotions for the characters or identify with their problems when the plot of this movie has little development or a clear point. The only theme that seems to recur in Avalon is the question of honor and loyalty within the Krichinsky family, but in the context of this film, this motif is much too mundane. Since it is likely that Levinson was recanting his own life as the descendant of Jewish immigrants, I think that Levinson forgot to develop this film more so that it could be appreciated by more than just the members of his family. It seems that the script of this movie should have just been kept as a momento among Levinson's family, because it seems to be too unengaging to be appealing to a wider audience. Two stars out of four.