Avalon

“**You cut the toikey without me!?”** I loved this film for many reasons, but mainly because of how adjacent the Krichinskys’ story is to my own family’s history. It’s a great typical Jewish-American immigrant story where the men start as working class wallpapersmen while the women raise the children, and then, when the children are grown and they have a little bit more wealth, they start their own business (a department store). The thing about this family is that they are very old-fashioned. They talk in thick accents and about nonsensical things as if they are still living in the old world. They are traditional, as well as superstitious when it comes to many things. The family is huge — the generation to move to America was 5 brothers who each had many children of their own. They make all of the financial decisions of the family together at “family circle.” What’s interesting to me is that the household is surprisingly secular — I don’t think a single topic of conversation came up that had anything to do with them being Jewish, besides Eva Krichinsky’s brother having survived the holocaust and her burial in a Jewish cemetery. Still, again, some of the family members are superstitious and traditional. At one moment during Thanksgiving dinner, despite the absolute tradition in this family to not cut the turkey until everyone has arrived, the kids complain that they are hungry and want to eat the turkey already. Uncle Gabriel has not arrived yet because the family has moved to the suburbs and it takes a while for them to get there. when Uncle Gabriel gets there and sees everyone eating, he cries out the line that begins this review, and promptly leaves the house with his wife. This seems very silly at face value. But upon further attempts to understand why this was so important to the man, I begun to realize why the old members of the family are so frustrated. In a way, they remind me of the older characters of The Sopranos. They see their lives, their families, community and society changing too quickly from their old ways. We see this family grow along with the city of Baltimore throughout the late 40s and into the 50s and later 60s. During that time, television is introduced to the masses and begins to slowly replace what used to be family time with a more droning “family” experience consisting of them sitting on the couch and watching Howdy Doody. We see over time that the family shrinks and shrinks, until a nuclear family is formed. The grandfather is furious with his son and nephew when they decide to change their last names after getting married. What I got from this film is the importance of family, and the fact that even when the times change, it’s important to prioritize the people in your life, to try to learn from your elders, and to tell inspiring stories to the generations that follow you.