Review of The Florida Project (2017)
Seen in 2021.
Six-year-old Moonee is out of control, spending long days with no money, no father and no schedule in the gravity well of Walt Disney World. It is the last summer before a kid her age would start school.
The movie is very good. Some viewers apparently don’t understand its plot, failing to read between the lines. The Florida Project does not have the grand scale of Boyhood (2014), but the flow of time has a strong presence here, too. Moonee has nothing but time, and yet that time is wasted. Like ten million real children in similar circumstances, Moonee’s fate is formed one minute at a time, at play and when nothing seems to be happening, in a world of glorious light and colour. She is powerless to escape, unable to make herself be born into a richer or more competent family, or to have the USA treat its lower caste well. US urban planning is a factor here: Moonee lives at a motel, but doesn’t have a car, so she walks everywhere along the roads of the commercial zone, where much is sold but nothing is made. Sean Baker did a brilliant job directing this dark indie slice of life, which is full of insight and compassion, not drama.
I didn’t see the movie because it is good. I saw it because of something Jacob Chapman once said about it, on the final 2020-05-29 episode of ANNCast, a podcast about Japanese animation. Chapman described seeing The Florida Project in 2018 together with Zac Bertschy, a lover and student of film. When Bertschy saw the ending, which is a brief lapse into fantasy where Moonee and her remaining friend run to Cinderella’s castle, he broke down crying. He eventually said to Chapman, by way of explanation: “That’s what I did.”
I didn’t know Bertschy, and he certainly didn’t know me, but I appreciated his work at ANN, his warm spirit, and his love of art and criticism. I didn’t know how much he suffered from addiction or from the justified public-health measures put in place to limit the spread of COVID-19. Bertschy died in May, 2020, not from the virus but because lockdown isolated him from the friends and healthy pleasures that had checked his self-hatred.
Bertschy grew up poor. He was one of those Moonees I happen to have had any relation to, even if this relation was strictly parasocial. Now, Bertschy’s 2020 death, his 2018 flash of recognition to the otherwise incongruent ending of the film, and the 2017 film itself, are inseparable to me because of Chapman’s public eulogy, which stayed fresh in my mind through the 18 months from when I heard it until I actually saw The Florida Project.
I miss Bertschy. An unusually large part of my reaction to the film is extrinsic to it and the work of making it. Very few people who see it will have this convoluted path to it, or this particular web of associations in which to fit it, but the possibility of profound recognition and connection is part of the unique value in such a good slice of life. You don’t get that kind of punch in big studio films that are made with glamour and the emotional guard rail of a score, for everyone and for no one. My particular viewing angle is not a case of serendipity, and not the only way to throw more light between the lines. Most people know a Moonee, even if they aren’t aware of it yet.