Sunshine StateAbout an hour into this film, I had no idea where it was going. The place is Plantation Island in Florida with two beach communities, Delrona and Lincoln. There are lots of characters and many entangled lives. There is also a distribution of these characters across age boundaries, racial boundaries, white and black, across socioeconomic boundaries and across business boundaries, the struggling small business vs. the giant impersonal corporation. Well ... the more I think about it, the more different boundaries come to mind.

John Sayles wrote the screenplay and directed the film. I first encountered a Sayles film with The Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980). I considered Secaucus a really good film, but it was really an event more than a story line and so is Sunshine State. Other Sayles films, The Secret of Roan Inish for example have a more traditional plot line. However, this does not discount the film. It's just a factor that enhances the temporal breadth dimension of the film rather than a timeline. And in this breadth, there are so many things in progress that it's somewhat daunting to keep track of them all. But that is life, and I think that's what Sayles is giving us, a picture of life's multifaceted concurrency in all of its nobility and absurdity.

But, now that I've proposed this analysis, I must also say that Sayles presents flashbacks, each of which could be considered a plot line.

Across the board, the acting was good and I enjoyed watching each of the character developments. I particularly liked Edie Falco who plays Marly, the disgruntled lady running her family's SeaVue motel and the sour 13-year-old who did Terrel who just may have been playing himself. But no one actor stole this show. They were all good.

Sayles presents us with entertainment and his own different perspective, a perspective that includes a continuous undercurrent of metaphors beginning with the first scene. Also, there's an ironic twist at the end for those willing to hang in there for the two hours and twenty minutes.