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List Price: $14.94 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 5909
Released: March 13, 2001 |
| Our Price: $8.49 |
| Used Price: $7.16 |
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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Intensely personal and yet universally appealing, AVALON follows immigrant Sam Krichinsky and his extended family as they seek a dream called America in a place called Avalon. From poverty through prosperity, the Krichinsky family faces their changing world with enduring humor and abiding love. Even when squabbling over a failed business or adjusting to a new land, Levinson never fails to find the comedy and immediacy of their immigrant experience. A superb cast, led by Armin Mueller-Stahl, Aidan Quinn and Elizabeth Perkins, perfectly captures the vibrant love and laughter of this quintessentially American family. The coming-of-age story of an entire nation, AVALON is a "tapestry of American life so rich and perfect it could hang in a museum."(Rex Reed)
Description of Avalon:
Writer-director Barry Levinson is at his best when exploring his native Baltimore during his formative years: the 1950s and 1960s. This film, drawing upon family stories, tells a compelling, amusing tale about an extended group that came to America one by one, each earning enough to bring the next sibling. The new, American-born generation--represented by Aidan Quinn and Kevin Pollak--see a future in that mysterious machine known as the television, even as the older generation, led by Armin Mueller-Stahl, finds its traditions shattering or being put aside. Funny, tragic, and telling, it's a terrific, multifaceted film that ultimately details the breakdown of the oral tradition in the wake of television's burgeoning popularity. --Marshall Fine
Avalon Reviews:
A beautiful depiction of love, life and family... 
2008-09-08 - `Avalon' is a beautifully complete look at family life and how it becomes so easy for us to lose our focus on the important things in life the further we get from our roots. Barry Levinson, the writer and director of this beautiful piece of cinema, drew from personal experiences (members of his family even appear in the film) in order to create a very real and emotionally connected film that anyone can enjoy and relate to. At its heart it is a film about family, regardless of class distinction or nationality, and we all come from a family.
`Avalon' tells the story of the Krichinsky family, a Polish-Jewish family that moves to New England, one family member at a time, at the dawn of the 20th century. The younger generation wants to take advantage of their new land and make a success of themselves, while the older generation struggles to keep relationships as strong as they once were in a land that forsakes culture for convenience. As the film progresses through the lives of the family we get to see each and everyone within the film flourish and grow. The contrasting states of the elder Sam and the younger Jules and the even younger Michael are seen in a beautiful array of emotional resonance.
What I genuinely appreciated about `Avalon' is that it never pressed sentimentality for an overtly dramatic effect. Case in point; within a few minutes of the films running time Jules is stabbed during an altercation with a robber. Instead of milking this for all its worth and creating an overly sentimental issue out of the stabbing, the film quickly moves on. This is a wonderful way for the film to create a very natural setting, allowing it to infuse its script with scenes of drama and weight without appearing to be `trying to hard'.
Each scene feels natural and relatable.
As Jules and his cousin Izzy attempt to create a name for themselves with their department store, Jules father Sam tries to keep his family together, and Jules son Michael tries to wrap his head around everything that is happening all at once. These three men (two men and a boy) prove to be the focus of the film and the film is truly told through their perspectives. Thanks to some wonderful acting, these men come to life before our very eyes.
Armin Mueller-Stahl creates a truly beautiful parental performance, warming and touching to the core. As he struggles to keep his family together we can see his dismay as they move further and further away from that close nit relationship they once experienced. Sam laments about the fact that the further they get from Avalon (the place which they lived upon their initial arrival to the States) the further they get from each other. Aidan Quinn is also wonderfully genuine as Jules. He creates a man who we can understand and rally behind as he attempts to bring his family into the 20th century. Elijah Wood though is the star here. His portrayal of young Michael is beautiful, truly grasping the child's wonderment and intrigue in his surroundings.
The supporting cast is also fantastic, from Elizabeth Perkins to Joan Plowright to Kevin Pollack, all of whom add many layers to the Krichinsky family.
There are many films about families from abroad who make their ways to the American shore (another wholly effective one would be the more recent `In America') and this is truly one of the better ones. It is emotionally connective, tremendously moving and in the end wonderfully entertaining. It is a film that everyone can enjoy, a film that the whole family can relate to and one that all can grow to love.
A very fine drama, good plot and story 
2008-07-21 - 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.
A Movie Like Hollywood Used to Make
2008-05-11 - This is an outstanding film -- a positive film -- just like Hollywood used to make. When I say "positive" I don't mean it's all peaches and cream and pollyanna. I mean it is, in the end, a very uplifting film. You've seen this film many times -- an immigrant family developing over the generations in a new country -- the U.S. Accordingly, it has all the joy and sadness that you see in any family, but the filmakers here have told the story with a brilliant touch of artistry and mastery. I know this will be one of the very few films I will watch over and over.
If you like Quality movies..
2007-06-09 - This movie is great. I first saw it over 10 years ago, and I have not forgotten it. It's a fantastic movie about how times change, how the little things in life make a big difference and how families change, grow, seperate.etc.
I love how it reflects the past and captures lazy summer days, bickering but loving families, grandparents out on the porch and old people who refuse to accept the new..it's a great movie!
Barry Levinson's Personal Epic Is Also His Forgotten Masterpiece
2007-01-11 - Looking back at some recent comedies by Barry Levinson ("Envy" and "Man of the Year"), it's hard to remember the not-so-distant past when he was a major Hollywood director. A primary creative force behind TV's lauded "Homicide," he also won accolades for film projects as diverse as "Diner" in 1982 to "Wag the Dog" in 1997. And for a few years, he was on a real roll of serious minded and critically acclaimed movies--"Good Morning, Vietnam" followed by an Oscar for "Rain Man" and then another nomination for "Bugsy." Well, in between "Rain Man" and "Bugsy" (both films that I would rate at 5 stars for different reasons), he made his most personal film yet. While "Avalon" doesn't have the high profile of some of these other films (it did secure some writing awards for Levinson, however)--it is my favorite. It's a little film, a quiet character study, a wistfully nostalgic look at a more innocent time--but it's done on an epic scale.
"Avalon" is a fictionalized (and idealized) account of Levinson's own history, a Jewish family from Russia emigrates to the United States to seek prosperity and happiness. Set largely in the Baltimore of the 1940s and 1950s, "Avalon" gently examines family and the discovery of new opportunity. Plot-wise, there isn't a lot to account for--this film doesn't just seek to tell a story, but to strike a mood and create a feeling. There are just great scenes of familial interaction, funny scenes about growing up, scenes of wonder at the progress of a new country. The film might be one of the strongest family films ever. In a day where every film represents dysfunction and quirkiness, "Avalon" is a sweet throwback. This film is based on love, communication, and how people can naturally drift apart. It can come across as innocent and sanitized, perhaps, but the writing is so crisp and observant and the performances are beautiful. To further set a mood, the film is shot beautifully with gorgeous colors and expanses and the score is spot on.
The film stars a young Elijah Wood (as Levinson's surrogate, we presume). Much of the film's wonder comes from seeing things from a child's perspective. It's easy to forget how long Wood has been around what with the "Lord of the Rings" phenomenon--but this is one of his earliest starring roles. His parents are played by Aidan Quinn and Elizabeth Perkins--both giving perfectly nuanced performances. But if the film belongs to anyone--it's Armin Mueller-Stahl as the grandfather. I've always felt that if this film had a slightly larger profile on its release, that this could have been his Oscar.
"Avalon" may not be for everyone--there isn't a lot of action. But for me, it's a near perfect film. I'm not warm and cuddly, by any means, and like entertainment with an edge. But "Avalon" captures me every time. It's so charming, so thoughtful, so engaging, so literate, so beautiful to look at. I recommend this film wholeheartedly, and hope to see a DVD reissue someday that mirrors the quality of the production. It's time more people discover this lost treasure! KGHarris, 01/07.
