Day: December 9, 2017

I was a media and cultural critic for some years, and I almost always have nits to pick with movies, there is no such thing as perfection in the creative world, and a critic’s job is to prepare his or her readers for what they will see.

But the movie I saw last  night, “The Florida Project,” was different for me, it is the closest thing to the perfect movie that I can remember.

It was  beautiful, heartrending, and pitch perfect movie/ the acting was extraordinary, the cinematography was amazing, and the narrative track was pure and gripping. There was a lot of truth and emotion.

I couldn’t find a single nit to pick with the plot or the writing. The director didn’t pander to anyone in the making of this movie, it is movie so full of heart it almost overflows. it was not predictable in any way, and satisfying in every way.

I can’t recall seeing a movie I loved so much, or respected so much.

Sean Baker did a brilliant job capturing the daily struggles of poor people in America,  often living in the shadows of the greatest wealth and comfort in the world.

The story was told mostly  through the eyes of children playing throughout a hot Orlando summer just outside the gates of Disney World, yet in another world, a place they can see but can’t quite get to.

In the world which Disney has spawned outside of the kingdom, full of many miles of seedy motels, lousy restaurants, life is very different – endless rows of cheap tourist traps, ice cream and orange stands and souvenir shacks.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Orlando as a father and then as a journalist and critic.

It is one of the most bittersweet spots I’ve ever seen, the burnished Disney Magic is surrounded by endless miles of broken dreams and struggle, of shabbiness and decay.

Disney was a big winner in Florida, but it gave birth to an awful lot of losers.

Few Disney visitors get to stay at the Posh Polynesian Resort or ride the monorail to the Magic Kingdom, most of the visitors stay in tacky motels and drive many miles to get to the park.

They go to cheap and often tawdry motels and camp sites, they are magnets for the poor and opportunistic. Everywhere, you can hear the cries of disappointed children and see their exhausted parents, all eager for time in paradise. There you can see the many broken ones,  seeking a piece of the dream.

This is rich crreative ground, and Baker explores it about as brilliantly as it can be explored and conveyed. We are a harsh and unforgiving country, we see that more and more every day. It is no place to be poor and troubled. We don’t build safety nets, we tear the down.

Baker chose to focus this wonderful movie on the joys of a childhood summer, Prince is a radiant and mesmerizing star.
But the film never lets us look too far away at the grinding reality of being poor in America, and living right alongside unimaginable wealth and promise.

Disney scholars will recognize the name  – “The Florida Project’ as Walt Disney’s early name for Disney World, which turned the center of Florida inside and out, and if you aren’t a tourist,  not always for the better.

The movie was truly innovative in the way it used color and the purple and yellow and mauve business and motels that are most decidedly un-Disney,  and are a magnet for the poor and broken losers in our culture.

Brooklyn Prince is astounding as young, brash and confident Moonee, I can’t remember seeing a more striking performance from a child.

Bria Vinaite was almost equally wonderful as Monee’s deeply troubled mother, desperate to be with the child she loved, but chronically unable to be a real and functioning mother. We all know this painful side of parenting, the mother or father who are more child than adult.

William Dafoe plays the good-hearted motel owner, torn between running his insanely dysfunctional motel and worrying about the children who run amok and cause him and others so much trouble.

There are no simple solutions or easy answers to the problems of ordinary people, and this movie never insults us by making the safe and easy choices and endings that are so characteristic of Hollywood movies about family. I thought it was just about a dozen times better than “Lady Bird”, which tried to explore some of the same territory, and turned mean and sappy at almost every turn.

Moonee’s mother loves her, but her life is so grinding she ends up selfishly using and exploiting here, she never seems to worry about what is best for her, only about how closely she can cling to her. The noose just keeps tightening on all of them, without fanfare or drama. Life has enough drama and fanfare of its own.

“The Florida Project” is  just an amazing movie, with a perfect ending. It is a warm movie, but it will reach your heart early on and hang on.

I can’t say enough about it, or recommend it too highly.

It is by far the best movie of this year and many other years for me. The film is just stirring and relentless in its beauty and sensitivity to the interior lives of children,  and of ordinary people fighting to survive in a harsh and Darwinian environment. Baker loves the vulnerable among us, but never demeans them by emotionalizing or patronizing them.

I rarely remember most of the movies  I see an hour after I leave the theater, Maria and I were talking about this movie all the way home.

It is just exciting to see a movie as balanced and creative – and innovative –  as this movie is. There is nothing cheap or easy about it. You will leave the theater feeling good and sad in about equal amounts, and you will be seeing a lot of Brooklyn Prince in the future, her performance is a classic. So is this movie, I think.

For most of the movie, Moonee is a tough, charismatic and explosively mischievous kid, then as the reality of life envelops her life, her mother, and their  life in the candy-colored motel, she finally becomes a child. It is really an amazing moment.

Dafoe is a metaphor for the rest of us, destined to watch so many people struggle to get control of their lives without ever quite knowing what he (we)  can do about it. He battles two instincts through the movie – staying in and holding back. By the end, he has to decide which way to go.

This is a very powerful movie about life inside the widening schisms in American between the rich and the poor.  We all know the deck is stacked against Moonie, we feel for her as she begins to see that for herself.

There is no better place to tell that story than on the outskirts of Disney World, a mystical monument to marketing, a kingdom that holds up an idea for children and families that most people can never reach or hope to achieve.

Disney is ever evoking the fantasy of the perfect family, but it is not an experience most of us will ever know. and it hurts to see it tossed in our face, again and again.

If I were to see one movie this holiday system, it would be this one, and feel free to bring children middle-school and up.

Baker  uses Disney as a silent and unseen character, the specter of Disney hovers over the movie. We don’t need to have Disney beaten into our heads, we all get it.

Baker uses Disney as a specter, not a character.

It is evoked rather than used to bludgeon us.

Disney is the promised land, the family paradise, an ultimate celebration of the all-American (thus prosperous and secure) family. Those left behind can only dream as they fight the daily and very non-Disney battles for survival.

The dream is especially cruel, got Moonee,  the pot of gold is just down the road, where it is almost always likely to be.

We had a sweet start to the weekend, we bought a table for the Mansion residents at the annual Christmas Breakfast sponsored by the Hubbard Hall Arts Center and hundreds of local people. This is a pure and remarkable grass roots event, begun 22 years ago as a way of giving the community a way to celebrate Christmas with local children.

The Hubbard Hall volunteers prepare and serve the food, but almost everything else is done by people in the community and their families. It is always a sell out, and the children dance and sing and perform Christmas scenes and stories.

We took six of the residents, including Art (who told me he wants to discuss the fact that grace was not said) and it was great for them to get out and into the community. The tickets for everyone – Maria and I came too – cost $90. Money well spent.

It is beautiful to see so many people in a community pitch into do something like this. It was a rich and warm way to enter the Christmas season. Afterwards,Maria and I went Thrift store shopping get to more winter clothes for the Mansion residents, and some for the refugees as well.

The Gus-Sweater issue has confounded me from the first. Dog lovers – especially dog lovers on social media – tend to be very certain in their opinions about what small dogs need in the winter, I was bombarded with e-mails telling me Gus must have a sweater in the cold, because he is a Boston Terrier.

I was huffing and puffing about my feeling that no dog of mine, big or small, would ever wear a sweater, let alone booties. I had to stand down on that pledge.

Even my vet said that Gus would need a sweater, so I readily agreed, bowed to superior wisdom, and bought two sweaters. Seems I was not all that  correct this time around either, Gus absolutely loves the snow and the cold, I took a photo of him tonight with my phone as he and Fate tore around the yard so fast even my fast camera couldn’t get a clear image at night.

Gus has been outside in single digit cold, and high winter winds, and today, several inches of snow and plunging temperatures. He has not yet shivered once, and just loves tearing back and forth int the snow like a Lab. The farmers who have Boston Terriers tell me they have never put sweaters on their dogs, but farmers are usually much more hardass than I am.

So far, I put a sweater on his once, and that was because I thought he must be cold, but he didn’t seem to know what. It didn’t stay on long.

The moral is dogs are not all the same, and our responses to them are not all the same. They are unique and often quite unpredictable. We just think we know them inside and out.

So we’ll see. So far, Gus has no interest in a sweater, he loves to go outside, eat gross things and race about with Fate, who also loves being out in the snow and would happily live outside if she could all year round.

I have my sweaters and am ready and willing to put them on, and maybe the deep February winter will be different, or huge snowfalls. So far, Gus is a happy and hardy winter dog. I can’t wait to see  how this all turns out.

Maria keeps working on the colors in the farm house, and in the New Mexico kitchen. She found a fabric from India and brought it into the newly painted kitchen. She loves it so much she sometimes just stands and stared at it.

For me, the fabric really blends well with the colors (and my carousel carving). It just works. She has transformed one of the drab rooms of an old farmhouse into something bright and cheerful. In the dark days of winter – the sun goes down around 4:30 now, these colors matter.

For color and light people like us, this lifts us up. Off to the Christmas Breakfast at the Hubbard Hall Arts Center, we are bringing a group of Mansion residents to have a hearty breakfast and see kids sing Christmas songs.