|
|
Film
|
|
Sunshine State
With his latest movie, filmmaker John Sayles’ continues to paint a full-blown portrait of the confused soul of America, by placing his multi-dimensional characters in the world of a fictitious, but fact based, Florida beach community.
Friday, June 21, 2002
By Brett Buckalew
|
"You can't live in the past," one character tells another at one
point during writer-director John Sayles' Sunshine State, and the fact
that the disapproving character is hypocritically suited up in the anachronistic
garb of a Civil War-era Yankee soldiers' uniform as he makes this particular
criticism is more than just a highly ironic joke; it's also a clever, concise
summary of Sayles' fascinating worldview.
Sayles, after all, is someone whose extraordinary, over-two-decades-long career
as an independent filmmaker has been spent exploring the notion that none of
us can ever really escape the past. Whether depicting a 1920 West Virginia miners'
strike that had serious implications for nationwide labor conditions (Matewan),
the 1919 White Sox scandal (Eight Men Out), which revealed the darker
side of America's favorite pastime, or the ways in which ancient prejudice still
scars the Texas-Mexican border (Lone Star), Sayles has always been devoted
to unveiling the wounds which history inflicts upon the present.
Frequently undervalued, and sometimes dismissed as being too "novelistic"
in his ambitious approach to film narrative (as if a story bulging with layers
of depth and detail was somehow a bad thing), Sayles is one of the most skillful
and socially relevant cinematic storytellers working today. Film by film, he
seems to be cobbling together nothing less than a full-blown portrait of the
confused soul of America, a country moving towards progress even as it continues
to grapple with the ghosts of past conflicts.
With the terrific Sunshine State, Sayles uses the setting of a fictional
but fact-based Florida beach community as a microcosm that represents the threat
to cultural identity and individual enterprise posed by the national encroachment
of big-business commercialism. As in his best work - and Sunshine State
certainly ranks as one of the director's richest, most satisfying films, which
is saying something - such grand, exciting ambition is balanced with a more
intimate focus on a collection of richly drawn, easily recognizable characters.
Knowing that history exists on both a social and personal scale, Sayles parallels
the large transitions changing the face of Plantation Island (inspired by Amelia
Island) with the smaller, though no less life-changing, decisions that two women
have to make. Like the island community, Marly (Edie Falco) and Desiree (Angela
Bassett) feel the strong tug of the past while still trying to grow towards
a hopefully better and less hurtful future.
Marly lives on Delrona Beach, running the cozy Sea-Vue Motel, a small business
given to her by her father (Ralph Waite), when his vision and health began to
fade. Tired of being constricted by this inherited obligation, and worn down
by a couple of failed relationships with immature, irresponsible men, Marly
yearns to break free. When she gets an offer to buy out the motel from the Exley
corporation, a behemoth that creates state-of-the-art tourist resorts, she starts
to reconsider her bitter yet dutiful devotion to the family business. Further
complicating matters is her gradually unfolding romance with Jack (Timothy Hutton),
a landscape architect for Exley.
Meanwhile, in Lincoln Beach, the predominantly black area of Plantation Island,
Desiree is coming back to her birthplace for the first time in 25 years. Her
anesthesiologist husband, Reggie (James McDaniel) immediately senses tension
between Desiree and her seemingly gracious yet secretly unforgiving mother (Mary
Alice). What Reggie doesn't yet know is that Desiree left Lincoln Beach in disgrace,
having gotten pregnant from a fling with Flash Phillips (Tom Wright), who was
then the town's celebrated football hero, when she was just 15 years old. The
baby was miscarried, but Desiree, now a wiser adult, is still burdened by anger
and regret.
In addition to these two central storylines, there is a funny subplot about
the Delrona Beach Buccaneer Days Festival, a sham reconstruction of the region's
history that is ultimately as phony and artificially glamorous as anything that
Exley could ever build. It is as part of this silly celebration that Marly's
deadbeat ex-husband, Steve (Richard Edson), has to dress up in the Civil War
uniform. As pathetic as the Buccaneer Days role-playing seems to be, it beats
some of Steve's other so-called jobs he used to occupy, including a failed mail-order
iguana business.
There is also a plot strand about a panicked, deep-in-debt banker (Gordon Clapp),
who turns to helping out a shady real-estate developer (Miguel Ferrer) for money,
that ends up going nowhere. But, oddly enough, this flaw is part of Sayles'
brilliance; his vast, beautiful human collage contains enough messiness, with
its character's conflicting emotions and colliding social agendas, to give it
the authentic feel of real life being lived.
| It is a testament to Sayles' compassion that even the most initially unsympathetic
characters keep growing and changing, until every one of them become rounded,
complex figures. Marly's father possesses distastefully old-fashioned ideas
about the black population of Lincoln Beach, but, by the end of the movie, it
is clear that this curmudgeon has a bigger, more accepting heart than he may
want to let on. Likewise, when Flash Phillips comes to town, our first instinct
to loathe him is complicated when his pitiable desperation to hold onto his
football glory days becomes evident.
|
With such refreshingly three-dimensional characters springing from the page,
the actors respond as if given a great gift. Falco brings a weathered, hard-bitten
decency to Marly, while Bassett imbues Desiree with subtle strength and resolve.
The supporting cast is filled with the kind of shrewdly detailed performances
that deserve end-of-the-year awards recognition, but rarely get it. Waite, with
his increasingly withering gruffness, and Alice, with her balancing act of strictness
and maternal concern, are standouts who deserve to make their way to Academy
ballots next March.
| There are great, deeply entertaining character moments throughout, such as
Marly and Jack holding each others' breath in their early flirtatious period,
and an indelible scene near the end between Marly's dad and a young boy (Bernard
Alexander Lewis) who he may or may not know is black. These pieces add up to
a remarkable whole, helping to build Sayles' portrait of the shifts with which
people and societies alike undergo, and of the way in which history being made
can feel so casual and mundane.
| |
It remains to be seen whether such thematic heft has a box-office future in
a summer littered with sullen teen Jedi and overrated web-crawling shenanigans,
but Sunshine State has the power to endure in a much more significant
way. In the way it so intelligently and movingly nails the inherent nature of
personal growth and American cultural transition, it ekes out a permanent place
in one's mind and heart.
|
|
|
|
|
 Email
|
 Print
|
|
|
|
|
|