One half-hour into watching Barry Levinson`s superb, immigrant family memoir ”Avalon,” I began wondering if the family being portrayed was really Jewish.
Their name is Krichinsky, and the grandfather arrives in Baltimore in 1914 on the steamship Thaddeus Kosciusko. So for a moment I thought they might be Polish Catholics. But then we`re told that the grandfather and his brothers are Russian, and later I heard a Hebrew phrase being used in memory of a dead relative. The other identifying mark, only at the end of the film, is the brief sight of a Star of David on a cemetery headstone. So Jewish they are, but why is it hidden so?
Before talking to writer/director Levinson himself, I wondered if making the Krichinskys so secular on film was a deception designed to widen the commercial appeal of a most personal story.
”Not at all,” Levinson answered in an interview in New York. ”I never really thought about it. The simple answer is that my family was not particularly religious. They went to synagogue only on the High Holidays. They were not religious people.
”That`s why all of the holidays being celebrated in the film are American holidays-the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving. I think the story has more resonance that way, showing how these people with an Eastern European sensibility dealt with being in America. Significantly, during the course of the story, the American holidays are used more as occasions for business sales-like the Thanksgiving Day sale-not just by Jewish businessmen, but by everyone.
”So that was the story I knew,” Levinson added, ”but it was one I had not seen much in the movies. What we typically get are Lower East Side New York stories like `Hester Street` or `Crossing Delancey.` I mean, when I used to tell people I grew up in Baltimore, they used to ask me, `They`re were Jews in Baltimore?` I guess we were thought of as Southern Jews,” he said with a smile.
That such a story got made at all is a surprise until one realizes that Levinson has had extraordinary box-office success with unlikely film material. The story of a disc jockey`s escapades in Vietnam? Robin Williams had mostly bombed on the big screen, but in Levinson`s hands ”Good Morning, Vietnam”
grossed more than $200 million worldwide. And how about the relationship between two brothers, one of whom is autistic? Both Steven Spielberg and Sydney Pollack tried and failed to film it, but Levinson`s ”Rain Man” became a $500 million smash.
So Levinson was able to get financing for his $20 million home movie about his family`s 50 years in Baltimore, from the oldtimers` days as itinerant paperhangers to the second generation`s reign as discount appliance moguls. But this time it is a movie without star power. The fine German actor Armin Mueller-Stahl plays Levinson`s grandfather, who arrives in America on the Fourth of July, 1914, and believes that the fireworks are an everyday occurrence. What a country!
During the ensuing years there are schisms among grandpa and his four brothers, and the splits are widened in the next generation as family members enjoy varying degress of business success.
A vicious argument about when to begin eating Thanksgiving dinner is really an argument filled with financial jealousy. Levinson`s young father
(Aidan Quinn) and mother (Elizabeth Perkins) have moved to the suburbs for a better life, but there is a hidden cost.
And yet as I watched the bittersweet progression of ”Avalon,” I also wondered if the Krichinskys` lack of religious observance might have been the missing glue they so desperately needed. ”I can`t say that,” Levinson said. ”For me their problems have more to do with money and televison and the move to suburbia.
”I grew up in a home surrounded by grandparents and aunts and uncles who were constantly in and out of our house. It was a large, loving environment with a strong sense of right and wrong, responsibility and honor. If you did something wrong, the worst part was that it was a shame upon the family.
”I remember back in the 5th grade that a classmate stole a Paper Mate pen and got caught. It was a huge scandal that everyone in the neighborhood heard about. It wasn`t the 49 cents; it was the shame on the family. Today, would it be such a big deal?
”With the breakup of the extended family”-which ”Avalon” documents so subtly-”all of that went out the window,” Levinson said. ”Family members moved away from each other, some out to the suburbs. . .
”So I see my Jewish heritage,” he said, ”not in terms of my bar mitzvah but in terms of a family tradition of storytelling and a solid sense of values.
”Do you remember the scene where the two little boys-me and my cousin-are wondering whether to confess to starting a fire? Well, I always thought it was significant that my cousin, who didn`t know his grandfather, says,
`Don`t say anything,` whereas my character, who grew up with his grandpa in his house, decides to tell. He has the sense of morality, and significantly he confesses to his grandfather. That`s the tradition I respect.”
Levinson sees religious observance not playing a role in his life, but doesn`t he owe a critical debt to his Jewish identity as forged over thousands of years by people more observant of the religion than he?
That may sound theoretical, but Levinson`s big break as a filmmaker came after his days as a standup comic and sitcom writer and through his relationship with the very Jewish Mel Brooks, who employed Levinson as a cowriter on his films ”Silent Movie” and ”High Anxiety.”
During those years Levinson often told Brooks stories about his youth in Baltimore, and Brooks encouraged Levinson to consider filming them. The result was ”Diner” (1982), about young men who can`t relate to women, and ”Tin Men” (1987), about older men who prefer to sell shingles and commiserate after work than confront the opposite sex.
”That debt I acknowledge,” Levinson said. ”That`s what I meant about the storytelling tradition. I guess what I resist,” he said, ”is that I should have included a scene of religious observance in my film when for me such observances were occasional and perfunctory.
”Personally,” he said, ”I don`t think the history of organized religion in this world-all religions-is that honorable or that life-affirming. Just consider all of the religious wars.”
