Avalon

Avalon

The only reason why this is the most renowned quote in literature is because it speaks a universal truth. “Avalon” directed by Barry Levinson is unique because it starts off as a film about a happy family and tells how it became unhappy that way. When I watched the first half hour of the movie, my hopes were dashed since it seemed like another one of those canned biopics about some immigrant family’s legends and eccentricities, which are always three times more colorful than life. But then the colors began to darken and so did the mood, as if reflecting something much deeper than what could be seen on surface level: this became a story about many American families over many generations who grew apart.

Let us examine the phrase “nuclear family.” It denotes an ideal that we strive for in our society mom, dad and all kids sitting around fireplace with pet dog lying beside them while they watch television together. Yet there seems to be something incomplete about this picture; where are grandparents? Uncles? Aunts? Cousins? In-laws? We name suchlike families nuclear because their center revolves around nucleus which is single-family home but also because these units fly lonely orbits without connection to larger world.

“Avalon” by Levinson draws its inspiration from his own background; he comes from a Russian-Jewish immigrant family where grandparents moved over as part of big extended kinship group each pooling resources until five krichinsky brothers settled down in Baltimore city. These men worked hard during week wallpapering but played violins at weekends for pay so they were musicians too when not working as paper-hangers themselves.

They had many children who all grew up together while living close by one another; often meeting up enough times every year to hold council meetings on top floor above their shops where money was saved towards good causes or used help out relatives going through tough patches financially etcetera. And very high hopes indeed did they have for their kids’ futures one father tells his son that never will he teach him how to hang wall paper because it is not something you should aspire towards doing with your life; this struck me just right since even my own pop refused teaching any trade owing to similar grounds.

The movie easily reconstructs Baltimore in the first half of the century, with detail that is unforced but rich. The clothes and cars are right, sure but so are the values. We see how important family traditions are for some of the brothers, especially Gabriel (Lou Jacobi). One brother moves to the suburbs after the war; Gabriel objects. He can’t find them, he says; it’s too far a drive. What he really means is that the family is flying apart and losing its sense of itself.

This process reaches its climax at Thanksgiving dinner, when Jacobi and his wife arrive late and everybody else has already cut the turkey: “You cut the turkey without me?”

That’s a small incident maybe, but it stands for a much larger one symbolizes it, in fact which is that this generation cuts off another link that binds it to its past. Each new generation drifts a little further from the center of the family circle; each new family is a little more lost within itself. Perhaps this has something to do with American society: Europeans are vertically conformist; they want to do things as their ancestors did.

Americans are horizontally conformist; we want to do things as our neighbors do. This process breaks down richness of ethnic heritage and creates a bland Middle American who, in a way, is from nowhere who was invented in TV commercials.

Television gets blamed by Levinson for most everything bad that happens to families these days. In “Diner,” at first everybody gathers around their first set (“Nothin’ on!” “It’s not hooked up yet”), staring in fascinated silence at test patterns until somebody adjusts an antenna and there’s Howdy Doody. Later those big meals where people grazed off serving dishes were replaced by smaller groups eating off TV trays while watching prime-time shows.

Meanwhile material success comes quickly to some Krichinsky cousins: Issy (Kevin Pollak) and Jules (Aidan Quinn) Kirk and Kaye, after they “Americanize” their names. They open a big appliance store, advertise on TV in hambone commercials that have the customers lined up around the block, expand to take over a warehouse and finally open Baltimore’s first discount department store. Everything’s going great when two of their sons including a character who is probably Levinson himself do something I will not reveal here, except to say that it is told with such empathy and memory for what children do and remember that it becomes the other central pillar of the movie.

In a way they do what they do because they’ve seen it done on television. The result is that one of their fathers gets a job selling advertising time on TV.

Television goes all through this movie like a thread. It’s socially divisive but it’s also an entertainment, hypnotic pastime, occupation, influence, presence. And yet Levinson seems to feel at the end as if TV were some disastrous invention that has cut off our human society from its roots. That may be true.

“Avalon” typically is a funny and heartwarming film, but it’s also sad. It can be said that this movie has the saddest ending ever. This shows how our modern families have let old people become alone and lonely in their retirement homes after they have been torn loose from their roots. The story of the film is about what happens when warmth and closeness are replaced with alienation and isolation among extended family members.

The title comes from Avalon, which was the name of a neighborhood in Baltimore where the family settled down first. In Celtic mythology, Avalon was supposed to be an island somewhere off Western shores that served as a paradise for blessed souls on earth. Who could know when going there they might drop right off edge?

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