Avalon

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.

It was like watching 30 Woody Allens frantically talking at the same time. At some moments a bit overwhelming but, all in all a good movie, also reminds me on Woody Allen's "Radio days". America, when the american dream was still a thing people believed in.

If you want a film that celebrates a way of life that's almost gone, that's well-acted in every department, and that gives you a major case of the warm fuzzies in a way the movies seem to have forgotten how to, Barry Levinson's "Avalon" is definitely it.

First, let's examine the cast: Armin Mueller-Stahl, Aidan Quinn, Elizabeth Perkins, Elijah Wood (some ten years pre-"LOTR"), Joan Plowright and Lou Jacobi ("Time to make the donuts!") all give fine, understated performances. Mueller-Stahl, in particular, is the sort of gentle, old-world grandfather anyone might have wished for.

But, as I said earlier, what this film is mainly about is a loving salute to a way of life that's almost gone. As a second generation American growing up in New York, what strikes me about "Avalon" is how real it all is, especially if you grew up in this era, as I did. Young Michael Kaye might have been myself in many ways. And a recent family reunion brought this feeling all back again.

A Wonderful, warm movie. See it!

AVALON (1990) **** Armin Mueller-Stahl, Aidan Quinn, Elizabeth Perkins, Kevin Pollak, Joan Plowright, Lou Jacobi, Elijah Wood, Leo Fuchs. Barry Levinson's personal masterpiece, loosely autobiographical, on family values. Absolutely charming and at times poignant account of the Krachinsky clan, spanning four generations of the Baltimore based Jewish immigrants, and the effects of suburbia, television and the decline of the closeness of American families at large. Wonderful ensemble of talent with a steadily paced and absorbing calmness in tone. Stahl gives a sterling endeavor as does young Wood as his wide-eyed grandson. Loving valentine for all families perfectly realized. Great production design and cinematography.

I'm 73 years old these days. I first saw Avalon about 25 years ago and I thought it was a fine movie. I watched it again yesterday and, in my eyes, it has now become a masterpiece. It is essentially about the life of one immigrant who came to America in 1914 as a young man, brought over by his brothers who came before him. He starts a family. The movie follows the family through the decades ranging from the 1940s to the 1970s. The family is in most ways ordinary. No one invents anything. These is no great artist, nor criminal. It is, essentially, a sentimental, somewhat bittersweet trip through mid-20th Century America.

I guess I have come to love Avalon because I have taken that same trip. My life's journey was about 20 years later than the one portrayed in the movie, and I was in Columbus, Ohio, not Baltimore, but many of the vignettes depicted in Avalon could have been mine. So, my 8-star rating is based largely on how I personally identify with the movie. If I were 18 and were watching it on TV on a Saturday afternoon, I'm not sure I would have made it through the whole movie. The film would not speak to me, at least not yet. Fact is, I may be in the last generation that sees Avalon in nostalgic terms rather than historic terms. I guess that's what happens with the passing of time.