Liberty Heights (1999) [HD]

Truly "personal cinema of the best kind"
Writer/Director Barry Levinson was prompted to make Liberty Heights after he became infuriated over what he perceived to be an anti-Semitic comment made by Entertainment Weekly film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum in her review of Levinson's Sphere (he accuses her of unnecessarily emphasizing the Jewishness of Dustin Hoffman's character). All I can say after viewing this superb film is that I hope more film critics piss Mr. Levinson off, for his fourth foray into the Baltimore of his youth is richly nostalgic without being overly sentimental (which was Avalon's biggest flaw). The young cast, headed by newcomer Ben Foster and ex-The Thin Red Liner Adrien Brody, does a fine job of bringing to life Levinson's vivid characterizations of sensitive adolescents struggling to come to terms with the colliding social and ethnic spheres of America in the 1950's. Levinson does a commendable job of avoiding the stereotypes that plague many of the films about the youth of this era; for example,...

Movie's Box Office Failure May Be A Good Sign
"Liberty Heights" revolves around a Jewish middle class Baltimore family of the mid 1950's. The father (Joe Mantega) is a decent and honorable man who just happens to earn a living as a boss of an illegal gambling organization. He is not perceived as a criminal to his immediate community, but merely as a family bread winner doing the best he can. To hide his earnings from the IRS, the father also runs a unprofitable burlesque house. The acts are so tame by today's standards that they seem hysterically funny instead of lascivious. Many like myself born into a minority Catholic background will readily commiserate with the young son (Ben Foster) who is astonished to learn that few people in the world are Jewish. There is a warm and tender scene where the child unintentionally insults his gentile lady host for serving him white bread, luncheon meat, and milk. The boy is appalled by all the revolting "white stuff" on the table. The innocent child looks at the...

Charming but scattered
Barry Levinson writes and directs a story about growing up Jewish in Baltimore, MD in the 1950's, a topic he knows a lot about being a native of that city born in 1942. As a period piece, this is outstanding. As a comedy/drama, it has its moments but is too scattered to have much impact. The story follows the lives of Nate Kurtzman (Joe Mantegna), and his two sons, Van (Adrian Brody) and Ben (Ben Foster) over the period of one year. Nate's subplot shows his life as a small-time racketeer. Van develops a crush on a wealthy gentile girl at a party, and spends much of the film pining after her. When he finally gets to know her better he finds that she is much different than he had imagined. Ben develops a crush on a black girl in his class and embarks on a friendship with her that flies in the face of the taboos of the times.

The entire film revolved around a single theme, i.e. how hard it was to grow up Jewish in the 1950's. Much of the material was amusing, some...

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