One of the refreshing aspects of a John Sayles film is a lack of an ideological axe to grind. Now, this isn’t to say that his work is not fiercely political—it is, and in the purest sense of the term, as so many of his stories revolve around a community of people who must find their way out of a common problem, usually through conversation, debate, and/or the sort of difficult interpersonal engagement(s) that could tip into either jovialness or violence. A variety of perspectives and backgrounds show up in a Sayles film, and all are given at least a few shades of complexity, so one cannot say that Sayles hews to stereotypes in order to unfairly lambast one side of the aisle—he simply lets his characters, in all their complicatedness, interact, and drive themselves toward story’s end. Of course, Sayles’s Leftist bona fides ought to be old news for anyone at least remotely aware of his oeuvre and legacy, but the point is that Sayles is a storyteller first, and advocate second; although he would also be the first to say that his artistry and his politics are deeply intertwined.
His 2002 film Sunshine State is an excellent example of this, as it is full of opportunities for Sayles to lapse into screed or sloganeering—Southernness, the legacy of racism, the encroachment of capitalistic interests into a small community, etc.—but he wisely focuses on his characters first, on their wants and disappointments, so that those broader issues reach out to the viewer with personalized force. That very little seems cleanly resolved by film’s end, in what might roughly be described as “victory” for one group, is a testament to the artist’s penchant for clear-eyed realism.
Two coastal communities, Lincoln Beach and Delrona Beach, Florida, are being targeted by real estate developers who want to do the usual thing of buying prime property from folks who have lived on the land for generations and turning said property into golf courses and/or high-rises and/or strip malls.
It is here that Sayles’s assemblage of characters play out there dramas, occasionally dovetailing: Marly Temple (Edie Falco), who runs a seaside motel and cafe, fights to keep the family property under family ownership whilst also entertaining a tryst with Jack Meadows (Timothy Hutton), a landscape architect under contract with Exley Plantations; Desiree (Angela Bassett), an actress who does mainly commercial work, with her anesthesiologist husband Reginald Perry (James McDaniel) in tow, returns home to visit her mother Eunice Stokes (Mary Alice) in Lincoln Beach after many years of estrangement; Terrell (Alex Lewis), a budding pyromaniac, who lives with Eunice due to past family trauma, gets in trouble with the law after setting fire to a local attraction; and town Commissioner Earl Pinkney (Gordon Clapp), tries to commit suicide a number of times, unable to cope with both pressure to sell to developers and the stresses of his wife, Francine (Mary Steenburgen), who does PR for the Delrona Beach Chamber of Commerce (and has ties with Exley). Also of some prominence is Dr. Elton Lloyd (Bill Cobbs), a local who tries to organize members of both communities to protest against the buyouts.
And throughout, Sayles has a group of wealthy golfers pop in and out of the narrative, not so much narrating the goings-on of the plot like a traditional Greek chorus as obliquely dealing with its headier themes through whimsical dialogue. It’s an effective way to portray the divide between those who treat land like space on a Monopoly board and those who live and die on it, and who must contend with the hovering hand.
Sayles is very adept at portraying the sort of smalltown entanglement(s) that occur in communities like Delrona/Lincoln Beach, and is equally adept at bringing to life the most minor characters, from the help at Marly’s businesses to a monotoned alligator handler. One gets the sense that Sayles doesn’t think of his characters in that way, because in the real world, no one person is minor to themselves, and so in a story, all must be given at least a touch of the real. Even the golfers, who out of the whole gallery of characters smack most of the allegorical, are totally believable (and might in fact be the CEOs of Exley and co.) in their banter, and in their craven desire to transform what’s mistakenly seen as squalidness and disorder (but what is just, in fact, the world) into a neat, manicured green.
But Sunshine State is about more than the greed of real estate developers—it’s about generational clash, and the mythologies generations create for themselves in order to endure. The two daughters in the film, for instance, Marly and Desiree, must contend with overbearing parental figures who envisioned a life for their children very different from the ones they ended up with. Marly’s father (Ralph Waite), a blind retiree who spends his days monologuing to his caregivers about rugged individualism and the days of yore when a man could make a name for himself with his own two hands, and all that jazz, bitterly holds on to his property to stick it to the special interest groups, but only at the expense of his daughter’s smothered existence. Desiree, once a popular beauty in high school, had to flee town for a mistake which, in her parents’ eyes, let down the race for molding to a stereotype of Black people—while all she’d needed from them was their reassurance and support.
And beyond family generations, there is the clash of ideological regimes, of the centuries falling over each other like so much abandoned stone. The Seminoles once had this land, but then the Spanish came, and then even the Spanish were gone—and then suddenly the Seminoles were the Seminoles, running footballs down a patch of manicured green, and the land became whatever anyone wanted, provided they had the money and the machines to change it.
But one of the other wonderful things about Sayles films is that these ideas and others never whack one in the face. Instead, they arise subtly from character interactions, from certain visual callbacks that do not ostentatiously telegraph their significance but allow the intelligent viewer to make the connection themselves (“Nature, on a leash”; then later on in the film, a shot of an alligator in a pen, etc.). It’s a subtlety that viewers who are used to cheaply sensationalizing tactics by less secure artists would miss; or worse, accuse as ho-hum. Humble, I think, works better. And very few filmmakers manage to blend and balance the variety of tones (there is, as I mentioned before, more than one suicide attempt in the film) in a single story so as to mimic the richness of real life like Sayles can.
The cast are all superb, of course, and while it has always been a plus of Sayles to accept lesser-knowns and amateurs (he himself being something of that stripe) it is always a pleasure to see tried-and-true pros like Falco and Bassett handle one of his scripts. I particularly liked Hutton as the self-aware cog, knowledgeable enough to understand where his expertise and importance cease to matter. And the editing, courtesy of the director, is likewise excellent. Sayles is particularly keen at letting certain lines of dialogue resonate by cutting to a different scene after a beat, and one is glad for that resonance, since he is such a skillful writer of voice and repartee.
Yes, while John Sayles’ rather workaday virtues somewhat work against him when compared to the highest echelon of filmmakers—those who use the full scope of the medium to express narrative and visual brilliance—having at least one assured masterpiece like Lone Star under your belt, along with a few other productions almost as great, is no mean feat.
But I’ve said something similar before. I’ll likely say it again; the man has a decently sized filmography, and I’ve yet to get to them all. And having just heard he’s currently working on another film (after seasons spent in development hell, and a spate of novels), here’s hoping the list gets even longer.
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