Before winning Oscars for Anora, Sean Baker made The Florida Project: A compassionate portrait of life on the margins
Weekend Ticket: A true champion of independent cinema, Sean Baker's slice-of-life features explore underrepresented communities with authenticity and care.
Sean Baker has been consistently making films for over a decade. With Anora, which won the American filmmaker a record-making four Oscars last Sunday, he has ascended to mainstream culture in a way where the world will also discover his more underrated works. His films are often about the people who are in the margins, taking an empathetic look at the everyday humanity in their lives. (Also read: Anora director Sean Baker makes Oscars history with 4 wins for the same movie)
Sean Baker's films
I love the director's breakout work in Tangerine (2015), a film shot entirely on an iPhone, revolving around a day in the lives of two trans sex workers. There's a daring and fearlessness in that film, which descends into more chaos and screwball energy before taking hold of a profound emotional weight that is build around its two protagonists played by Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor. That last shot of the film remains unforgettable.
But not just Tangerine, any Sean Baker film is characterized by a particularly moving and memorable last sequence. In a Sean Baker film, the parting shot does not merely signify a conclusion or a way to tie the loose threads for the characters, but they are open to so much more. It can be an invitation to look closer. It is as if the entire film is built on that sequence alone, permitting the viewer to reorient their perception on these character a second time around.
The Florida Project
Which brings me to the director's 2017 film The Florida Project, which according to me, is still his best work to date. Set in a budget motel in Kissimmee, Florida, it revolves around 6-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) and her two best friends as they spend their days playing around the motel, accompanying her single mother Halley (Bria Vinaite) in selling perfume to tourists in the parking lots of upscale hotels. Back at the rundown place, there is Bobby (Willem Dafoe), who is irritated by the nuisance created by Halley and the gang of kids, although he can't help but look out for them as some sort of a father figure.
The Florida Project spends a lot of time with the kids, and eschews in their innocent perspective to reflect on the way the adults around them deal with the world on a daily basis. But slowly, Baker's camera turn inwards, as he quietly discovers the desperation and sadness that underlines it all. The Florida Project works so tremendously because it portrays these characters, and their poverty, with compassionate detail and warmth. Baker's neorealist approach to Moonee and her perception of this lovely playground of a place slowly shatters, as she sees the adults fight, cry and try to make it through the day. You can see her vibrancy at first, and then her confusion when her mother gets into trouble. It is simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, meandering and profound.
Final thoughts
There is a persistent sense of empathy and concern in the way Baker's camera observes them, which juxtaposes the bright colour palette of the motel to the underlying helplessness of its residents. This is the precise reason why the film, which details the lives of these lower-class family living right next to Disney Park, billed as the ‘happiest place on earth’, never feels like poverty porn. Because, happiness, as Moonee knows by now, lies somewhere down the road. It all adds up to a particularly sublime payoff at the end, when Moonee decides to take one last decision for herself when she knows things might go horribly wrong the next moment. She runs off to Disneyland with her best friend, and Baker tries to catch up with her speed right behind until he can't anymore. Something tells us that Moonee will be fine and that is all there is to say.
With Tangerine, The Florida Project, then Red Rocket and now Anora, Sean Baker has consistently told stories about the disenfranchised, about people from the sex worker community. His indie films rely on a character-driven, slice-of-life approach, often letting go of traditional narrative structures and focusing on the linear interplay and time and place. In a Sean Baker film, there is always a brashness and ferocity of action, balanced with an acute emotional wavelength that never lets go off the truth of its characters. With Anora, he has had a dream run to the Oscar stage, directing the limelight towards championing independent cinema. Like his films, this is a wondrous payoff, which will hopefully pave more awareness and attention to independent films.
This is Weekend Ticket, where Santanu Das talks about similar films and shows based on the most recent releases.
