LIBERTY HEIGHTS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Barry Levinson's fourth Baltimore
film again examines his neighborhood as he
remembers it, but now he looks at class, race, and
religious tensions. His conclusion, however, seems
to be that none of these tensions really amounted
to much. He finds everybody being basically of
good will even if they can be a bit confused at
times. This is a good-hearted film with three
strong story lines and a textured recreation of the
atmosphere of the 1950s youth. Rating: 7 (0 to
10), +2 (-4 to +4)
As Barry Levinson looks at the Baltimore of his youth, in each successive film things get more serious. In DINER there was a small group of guys who were friends. In TIN MEN we see that there were also the more serious types who had to earn a living. AVALON told us that these people we are talking about are immigrant Jews who have to struggle to make the American thing work for them. In LIBERTY HEIGHTS we see that the Jews have to interface with other classes, other races, and other religions. There are definite tensions in this film as the diverse groups come in contact with each other, but Levinson is not as militant as a Spike Lee would be. His approach is more that of a peacemaker who sees no villains in the tensions. His world is populated with diverse groups who feel uneasy about each other only pending getting to know each other better.
The story follows the Kurtzman brothers, Van (played by Adrien Brody) and Ben (Ben Foster). They are growing up in the area of Forrest Park and Liberty Heights in Baltimore. Their neighborhood is so overwhelmingly Jewish that growing up Ben had just assumed a Chinese pupil in his grade school was also Jewish. Levinson, who wrote as well as directed, makes some humorous comments about how Jewish and non- Jewish households are different. Ben is amazed at how the Christians seem hung up on the color white, even to the point of eating their bread raw. In 1954 Van is in college and Ben in high school, but they remain somewhat provincial. At home they learn there are Jews and "the other kind." They are getting to the point when they will have to deal with the other kind. Their father, Nate Kurtzman (Joe Mantegna), runs a failing burlesque house as a front for his illegal numbers racket. Yet in spite of being a criminal, he deals only in a victimless crime and is a man of honor.
Van, Ben, and friends are planning to crash a Halloween party put on by some upper class other kinds. Bens parents are shocked by his dressing up as Adolph Hitler. Ben is told that he will have to stay home. At the party Van sees a woman, Dubby (Carolyn Murphy), who looks to him like a vision in white and he is immediately smitten. But the presence of uninvited Jews at the party leads to a fight that the other kind boys are spoiling for.
Meanwhile, Ben is also getting interested in a girl of the other kind. But in this case it is another kind of other kind. He is intrigued by Sylvia (Rebekah Johnson) the one black girl in his class. He strikes up a secret friendship with her. He finds the black community has their own comedians as well as their own music, but he quickly develops a taste for both. A third though less well-developed line of plot follows their fathers financial problems when the numbers racket proves to be less than profitable for him and when he finds himself owing a great deal of money to a small-time drug dealer, Little Melvin (Orlando Jones). Nice little personal touches characterize Nate. He dresses like a very successful man and always drives the latest model of Cadillac, even after one stroke of bad luck threatens to leave him nearly destitute. He practices his ballroom dancing in their semi-finished basement with his wife Ada (Bebe Neuwirth).
As usual, Levinson gets convincing acting from his cast. But somehow neither Mantegna nor Neuwirth seem very Jewish. And neither has the angular face that the Brody or Foster has, making the family a little less believable. It has been claimed that stage comics make very good actors and so it should not be surprising that Orlando Jones, formerly of MAD TV, has a great deal of stage presence. Perhaps Levinson should have increased the size of his role.
Levinson ties his series together with touches running though most of his series. Once again the main characters hang out in the Fells Point Diner. At the diner or elsewhere some of the best conversation (and much of the comic dialog) is around the table and over a meal. Levinson repeats the image of handsome women on horseback which he previously used in DINER.
Through the film Levinson sustains the 1950s feel though he overuses the device of wall-to-wall 1950s music. Chris Doyle's camerawork could have done the job by itself without so artificial a device. Also there are a few anachronisms notable. There is a reference to watching Perry Mason which would not debut until 1957. It also looks like Hitchcock's 1951 STRANGERS ON A TRAIN is being broadcast to television on in 1954, which seems highly unlikely.
LIBERTY HEIGHTS was for me not quite the film that AVALON was. Some people are a little too unrealistically nice in this film. There is nothing in this film that matches the scope of that one or the tender relationship between the Aiden Quinn character and his son in AVALON. I would give it a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
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