Review of The Florida Project (2017) by Marcel A — 28 Oct 2017

My favourite film at last month's Atlantic Film Festival returns to Halifax this week, and a second viewing last night only reaffirmed my profound love for Sean Baker's engrossing drama. Set in a fleabag Orlando motel called the Magic Castle, the latest movie by this blazingly talented filmmaker (who shot his previous film - i.e. the 2015 sleeper hit 'Tangerine' - on three iPhone 5s smartphones) offers a sobering look at life just below the poverty line. Meticulously cared for by kindly motel manager/unofficial father figure Bobby (a never-better Willem Dafoe), the Magic Castle is the closest thing to a home many of its long-time occupants will likely know. Here, Disney World (located just down the road from the motel) clearly acts as a stand-in for that most cherished of Western ideals, the 'American Dream': the ongoing myth that any US citizen can achieve success and prosperity through hard work and sheer determination alone. For the poverty-stricken residents that eke out of a living in its shadow, the iconic theme park may as well be located across the ocean, its pricey attractions simply too great an expense to justify when food and shelter are already hard to come by.

That being said, the adults of THE FLORIDA PROJECT don't waste time bemoaning the societal inequities that plague them; they're too busy working dead-end jobs or hustling tourists for next week's rent. Similarly, the kids here feel refreshingly real: bratty and potty-mouthed, yet fundementally good and blissfully unaware of the dangers that occasionally lurk in the shadows. Largely seen through the eyes of 6-year-old Moonie (played with unbridled confidence by Brooklynn Prince in an Oscar-worthy debut), the day-to-day happenings at the Magic Castle spotlight a tight-knit community that measures success in small victories: a temporary windfall of cash leads to a shopping spree at a nearby dollar store, and the giddy joy shared by Moonie and her single mom Halley as they cruise the aisles for cheap trinkets is as infectious as it is ultimately sad.

Curiously, the film's final exhilirating moments were met with audible confusion and even derision by several of my fellow moviegoers last night; inexplicably, the film's underlying themes seemed completely lost on them. A great shame, but hopefully just an anomaly. You'd have to be a moron not to pick up on the stinging indictment of modern America that lies just below the surface, yet Baker avoids bashing you over the head with his messaging by focusing the story's attention squarely on its characters, capturing them with the same level of empathy he bestowed on the transgender sex workers of 'Tangerine'. An early frontrunner as my favourite movie of the year, 'The Florida Project' is a stunningly humane treatment of poverty in America that finds both hope and humour in unexpected places without robbing its victims of their dignity.