`Odessa': no redemption
When the main character of Little Odessa, Joshua Shapira (Tim Roth), a hit man for the Russian Mafia, calmly walks up to a victim on a park bench and shoots him, the audience thinks it knows the film's villain.
But we soon learn that the murderer is himself a victim. Little Odessa is an old fable set in the late 20th century -- one of a second-generation Jew attempting to assimilate, rebelling against his orthodox father. Joshua succeeds, but not in business or in entertainment like so many other sons in the past, but in a meaningless life of crime that is his easiest option.
Joshua elicits profound sympathy from the audience because he is lost. "We're the Jews, we wander," he says, but Joshua has nowhere to go. First-time writer/director James Gray, himself a Russian Jew, creates Joshua, a heartless killer, not as an indictment of Little Odessa but of contemporary America.
In the film, Joshua receives orders from his mob boss to return to his old neighborhood, Little Odessa in Brooklyn, from which he has been banished by both his father and his enemies. Back home, Joshua's redemption seems possible, not because he will give up his occupation, but because of renewed relationships with his mother (outstandingly played by Vanessa Redgrave), little brother Reuben (Edward Furlong) and old girlfriend Alla (Moira Kelly). But in Little Odessa , redemption is impossible. Cancer overtakes Joshua's mother, and his brother and girlfriend die tragic and meaningless deaths.
Joshua's father, played by Maximillian Schell, is a proud intellectual forced to run a newspaper stand. He cares for his dying wife while having an affair with a young blonde (Natasha Andreichhenko). He suffers because Joshua is a hit man. He deplores his own naiveté for having once thought that if he played Mozart for his children and read them Crime and Punishment , they would turn out all right.
The father elicits pathos from the audience because he suffers greatly. But when Joshua returns home to see his dying mother and his father kicks him out of the house, screaming, "Murderer!" the viewer's sympathies shift toward Joshua.
Perhaps the most miserable character in the film is Reuben, Joshua's kid brother. He loves his dying mother and worships his hit-man older brother. He skips school for months without getting caught and is constantly sucking on cigarettes and joints. He, like Joshua, is a rebel, leading a new "American" life.
Reuben never shows much emotion about his miserable home, and even Joshua tells him that "it's OK to be sad" about his mother. When the father beats Reuben for skipping school, Joshua sticks a gun in his father's face and takes him to a frozen field. But in the emotional wasteland of Little Odessa , this act is an expression of love.
Little Odessa will be playing at the Rice Media Center on March 2 at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. and on March 3 at 7:30 p.m. General admission is $5, $4 with a Rice ID.
This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the March 1, 1996 issue.
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