Mary Alice as Eunice Stokes

FILM CRITIQUE:
John Sayles' "Sunshine State" is a virtual lock to be on my "Ten Best Movie List for 2002." Yes, this movie is that good. This movie is more than good; this movie is a wonderful, glorious cinematic tableaux. It is a vivid portrait of life in a sleepy northern Florida coastal town directly in the path of greedy real estate developers anxious to upgrade the area for rich, vacationing Northerners.

Seeing "Sunshine State" is comparable to going to a museum and seeing the great artistry of a Lautrec or a Renoir capturing forever an evanescent moment of a quiet picnic on a sunny French river bank or the colorful nightlife in a Nineteenth Century Left Bank Parisian bistro.

First let me state for the record what "Sunshine State" is NOT. It is not a summer action movie. In fact, it is the very antithesis of summer action movies. Those are mindless, this movie is mindful. Those are fast paced, this movie is slow paced. Those are epic in scope and sweep of action, generally of battle scenes across vast landscapes. This movie is epic only in character development and historical only in its sweep across the tiny landscape of a backwater coastal town that time until now has largely forgotten.

"Sunshine State" is also not a murder mystery similar to Sayles' earlier masterpiece, "Lone Star"(1996), with Chris Cooper as the young Sheriff Deeds coming back to solve a murder along with his having to deal with the demons of his past in a small multi-ethnic community along the Rio Grande River in Southern Texas.

What these two movies share in common is the sometimes awkward mixing of differing ethnicities immeasurably enhanced by the brilliantly trenchant writing providing solid characterizations of each and every ethnic type across all sides of the personality landscape.

How Sayles accomplishes all of this so well is absolutely beyond my comprehension. Every statement that everyone utters in these two fabulous movies has an authentic, heartfelt ring of truth about it.

Furthermore, he beautifully fleshes out the personality of each of his locales from the perspective of his wonderfully developed characters. How he also accomplishes this without spending extensive time scouting out each new locale is also a matter of great curiosity, not to mention complete and total admiration, to me.

Please note that John Sayles is not only the writer of the script for this film, he is also the director of the filming and the editor of the film after completion. The net result is that this movie is an undiluted statement of his own personal artistic vision similar to his earlier successes, including "Limbo"(1999), "Lone Star"(1996), "The Secret of Roan Inish"(1994), "Passion Fish"(1992), and "City of Hope"(1991).

With "Lone Star" Sayles gave us his take on the Hispanic and Texan (Anglo) communities in a small border town. In "Sunshine State" he presents his take on the Black and White communities living side by side on the small Plantation Island located on the northern Atlantic coast of Florida.

As in all the best movies ever made, the characters in "Sunshine State" are so richly drawn and so fully developed that they become real people. These are not the cardboard, one or two dimensional characters of other movies lacking a writer of Sayles' stature. Sayles convinces you through the magic of his storytelling that you will be sure to find these people still living there should you ever travel to that small coastal island.

At its core, "Sunshine State" is really a movie about two women. Two very special women. Two very beautiful women, both inside and outside, in spite of the fact that each lives with a great deal of pain as both have to deal with a large number of personal problems in their lives.

The first woman is Desiree Stokes Perry (Angela Bassett), who left Plantation Island at the age of 15 and never came back, except for a short visit for her father's funeral. Now living in Boston, she is a successful model at industrial shows as well as being an actress spokesperson in television infomercials.

Desiree is filled with anger and resentment towards her mother, Eunice Stokes (Mary Alice), and only consents to return home and mend fences with her at the urging of her new husband, Reggie Perry (James McDaniel), the head anesthesiologist at a Boston Hospital.

The other woman is Marly Temple (Edie Falco, of "The Sopranos" fame), a sixth generation islander who has stayed around for so much of her life that she finds it all too easy to slip back into her native cracker mentality in spite of her more educated upbringing and a mother, Delia Temple (Jane Alexander), who has owned and managed the island's periodic resident theater group for more than 20 years.

Marly competently and faithfully maintains the family business founded by her father, Furman Temple(Ralph Waite of "The Waltons"), a business which consists of an aging oceanside motel and a modest restaurant in the heart of Delrona Beach, the only town on the island.

Edie Falco is just fabulous as the droll, wise cracking Marly with a heart of gold available, it seems, only to men who seem to love her and then leave her. Angela Bassett is equally fabulous as the long lost daughter finally come home to her mother with a handsome, loving husband and a very large chip on her shoulder.

Mary Alice plays the role of Angela Bassett's mother with such grace and dignity that you cannot help but love her for the noble soul that she is.

Equally noble and lovable is the aging retired doctor to the Stokes' family, Dr. Lloyd (Bill Cobbs), who plays the town's conscience and local agitator to the largely apathetic populace, all of whom feel helpless to stop the burgeoning real estate development frenzy because the "fix" is in with the county commissioners, all of whom happen to be white.

Finally, mention should also be made of Ralph Waite who plays Marly's aged father. He is infirm, diabetic, and nearly blind, but is still filled with a delightful measure of p** and vinegar. Furman Temple is an old man who time has passed by like much of the rest of Delrona Beach. However, he also has the nobility to accept the inevitability of change when it finally comes.

When was the last time you saw a movie starring a segregationist with a noble heart? That takes some doing, and the seldom seen but sorely missed Waite takes Sayles' sympathetic writing and runs with it all the way to our hearts.

Nothing would make me happier than to see Falco and Bassett with Best Actress nominations, Waite and Cobbs with Best Supporting Actor nominations, and Alice with a Best Supporting Actress nomination come next January. Their roles and what they do with them are just extraordinary and a beautiful testament to their wonderful acting ability in putting their souls into Sayles' wonderful script.

Needless to say, I would also be thrilled to see Sayles receive two Oscar nominations both for his Directing and for his most lovingly heartfelt original script work.

In my heart of hearts, I know that this will never happen because it is far too early in the year and the memories of the members of the Academy are far too short, but it is my firm conviction that you will never see better acting than what you will see in this movie. The Academy could offer every single Oscar statuette available to every aspect of this movie and they would be well justified in making that decision.

"Sunshine State" is a work of art and a national treasure. I have already seen this movie twice and look forward to seeing it again. Mere words just cannot describe what a jewel of a movie this is.

John Sayles has created a human tapestry of such depth, tenderness, and affection that you can almost feel the camera making love to the many wonderful characters in this movie. I have now walked out of the theater twice filled with absolute amazement at what a warm, complex, heartfelt, and moving world Sayles has created in this, his new cinematic masterpiece.
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FILM SYNOPSIS:
Plantation Island is a small, quiet backwater island on the Atlantic coast of Florida near the border with Georgia. Named for a Nineteenth Century plantation that used to occupy the entire island, nature has long since recaptured her own except for the small town of Delrona Beach and the recently completed Exley Plantation, a new "chi chi" resort for rich, vacationing northerners.

The attractiveness and financial success of that development along with its golf courses, manicured lawns, and private beaches has brought other developers down to Delrona Beach to compete with the Exley developers to snap up as much of the local real estate as quickly and as cheaply as possible so that they too can build their own private resorts for the well to do.

Existing uneasily between the town and Exley Plantation is Lincoln Beach, a Black development area from the days when this small stretch of sand was the only beach front property "in three counties" that Black people were able to buy for themselves back in the Jim Crow days of segregation. As a result, the creme de la creme of Black professionals from Jacksonville and other Southern cities flocked to Lincoln Beach to build their own little pieces of heaven along the rugged, dune covered shoreline.

In those days 40 and 50 years ago, this special little community thrived because the residents supported each other economically as well as socially. However, beginning with the passage of the civil rights laws in the Sixties, Lincoln Beach started to fade into a state of genteel dilapidation as well-to-do Blacks found other vacation opportunities available to them for sand, surf, and sunshine.

While a few of the old guard have remained and others who had grown up here have returned and retired to Lincoln Beach, by and large many of the homes and most of the commercial properties along their small strip of beach front have long since been abandoned.

Now a former Black Seminole football hero, "Flash" Phillips (Tom Wright) is nosing around his old home of Lincoln Beach and is picking up abandoned property on the cheap by paying off their back taxes. Dr. Lloyd rails at him and the members of the island's plan commission for stoking the fires of development in such a way as to make him highly suspicious that a fix is in.

Heaven only knows that he has ample justification for feeling this way as their own Black cemetery, dating back to the days of slavery, is now a small walled in part of the Exley Plantation golf course. The residents of Lincoln Beach have to suffer the indignity of passing through a security gate in order to pay their respects to their dearly departed family members.

Murray Silver (Alan King) is out playing a round of golf at the Exley Plantation with three of his friends, one of whom is Buster Bidwell (Clifton James, also Mayor Hollis Pogue in "Lone Star"). Like a member of an operatic chorus offering commentary off on stage left, Murray offers trenchant wisdom to his golfing partners about the wisdom of putting "nature on a leash."

After all, who wants to buy swampland with mud and alligators and mosquitoes as big as horses? That kind of "nature is overrated," while the majesty of a manicured golf course represents the ultimate in natural beauty to Silver.

Desiree Perry (Angela Bassett), newly wedded to Reggie Perry (James McDaniel), drives up to her mother's beach front home just as a policeman leaves after having discussed with Eunice some delinquency problems concerning her nephew and ward, Terrell Bernard (Alex Lewis). Reggie is curious and open-minded about his new mother-in-law while his new wife is wound up as tight as a clock spring about some long past conflicts yet to be resolved between her and her mother.

Marly Temple (Edie Falco) is at work managing her restaurant when she spies an overly dressed man outside the window looking around in a decidedly purposeful manner. She goes out to offer him a room, but he turns her down by saying that he is just trying to visualize the property "without anything on it."

"How does it look?" she asks. He replies that it looks pretty good, and Marly has now met Jack Meadows (Timothy Hutton), who informs her that while he does work for the Exley Plantation group, he is not a developer but is rather their landscape architect.

She later surprises and impresses him by letting him know that she knows who the Olmstead brothers are and that they are famous for, among other things, having landscaped New York City's Central Park. A budding respect and chemistry begins to form between the two, which is propitious timing as Marly's current little boy toy for quickie sex, the country club golfing whiz ten years her junior, is about to head out on the professional golfing circuit.

Francine Pickney (Mary Steenburgen) is once again desperately trying to drum up interest in her annual Buccaneer Days festival. The residents of Delrona Beach are about as apathetic about this aspect of their history as they are about either the onset of the developers or the plays that Marly's mother periodically throws in the local school auditorium with the help of the troubled kids that the police send her way for community service.

Watching Steenburgen playing the role of the festival organizer and cheerleader in the face of such an overwhelming lack of interest on the part of her neighbors is a wonder to behold. Her smiling, porcelain face shows an upbeat cheerleading front while her eyes show the heartbreak and pain beneath that false smiling exterior that every moment wants to bust through and is only held in check by her own personal fortitude to persevere in spite of the long odds against her.

Francine is married to a local banker and plan commission member, Earl Pickney (Gordon Clapp), who has problems of his own with a secret gambling addiction that threatens to pull him under. Earl and Francine love each other like two people alone on a life raft with no one else left to turn to. The poignancy of their relationship is indeed a very sad sweetness to behold.

There are, of course, many other small characters in "Sunshine State" including Miguel Ferrer, son of Jose Ferrer, playing the role of an unethical developer willing to use any means, legal or otherwise, to achieve his goal.

Even these small roles are played with such complete conviction that the reality of this movie is just overwhelming!