Post by kijii on May 25, 2020 4:39:32 GMT
Liberty Heights (1999) / Barry Levinson
Here is yet another entertaining movie written and directed by Barry Levinson and set in Baltimore. Levinson is one year older than me and this movie may have been how he saw the mid 50s. However, to me--a goy, born and raised in Colorado--they did not seem nearly as interesting or complicated in terms of social taboos and racial demarcations. The movie is set at a time well before the civil rights movement began on a national level. Nevertheless, the movie is very good, filled with all sorts of fun (but improbable) things to explore, surreptitiously through a movie.
When three Jewish boys from the Liberty Heights area of Baltimore, go outside of their world into "the other" areas of Baltimore, they explore and expose racism and anti-Semitism as only movie characters could:
Ben Kurtzman (Ben Foster): [voice-over at the end] Life is made up of a few big moments, and a lot of little ones. I still remember the first time I kissed Sylvia, or the last time I hugged my father before he died. And I still remember that white-bread sandwich and that blonde dancing girl with the cigarette pack on her thigh. But a lot of images fade, and no matter how hard I try, I can't get them back. I had a relative once who said that if I knew things would no longer be, I would have tried to remember better.
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Here is yet another entertaining movie written and directed by Barry Levinson and set in Baltimore. Levinson is one year older than me and this movie may have been how he saw the mid 50s. However, to me--a goy, born and raised in Colorado--they did not seem nearly as interesting or complicated in terms of social taboos and racial demarcations. The movie is set at a time well before the civil rights movement began on a national level. Nevertheless, the movie is very good, filled with all sorts of fun (but improbable) things to explore, surreptitiously through a movie.
When three Jewish boys from the Liberty Heights area of Baltimore, go outside of their world into "the other" areas of Baltimore, they explore and expose racism and anti-Semitism as only movie characters could:
Anti-Semitism, race relations, coming of age, and fathers and sons: in Baltimore from fall, 1954, to fall, 1955. Racial integration comes to the high school, TV is killing burlesque, and rock and roll is pushing the Four Lads off the Hit Parade. Ben, a high school senior, and his older brother Van are exploring "the other": in Ben's case, it's friendship with Sylvia, a Black student; with Van, it's a party in the WASP part of town and falling for a debutante, Dubbie. Sylvia gives Ben tickets to a James Brown concert; Dubbie invites Van to a motel: new worlds open. Meanwhile, their dad Nate, who runs a numbers game, loses big to a small-time pusher, Little Melvin; a partnership ensues. —<jhailey@hotmail.com>.
Ben Kurtzman (Ben Foster): [voice-over at the end] Life is made up of a few big moments, and a lot of little ones. I still remember the first time I kissed Sylvia, or the last time I hugged my father before he died. And I still remember that white-bread sandwich and that blonde dancing girl with the cigarette pack on her thigh. But a lot of images fade, and no matter how hard I try, I can't get them back. I had a relative once who said that if I knew things would no longer be, I would have tried to remember better.