Sean Baker's Prince of Broadway uses intimate handheld photography to create a naturalist portrait of two men who hustle to survive in the underbelly of New York City's fashion district. Featuring a feeling of realism and authenticity that is typically reserved only for documentaries, Prince of Broadway follows Lucky, an illegal immigrant from Ghana, whose job requires soliciting shoppers on the street to a small storefront that specializes in knockoff brand merchandise. The store is owned by Levon, an Armenian-Lebanese immigrant, who operates the illegal storefront himself, making sure the backroom is always stocked with the most up-to-date knockoffs. One day, Lucky finds his entire world flipped upside down when a young baby is thrust into his life by an old girlfriend, who insists the toddler is his own child. Prince of Broadway is neorealist filmmaking at its finest, using the journey of two characters in Lucky and Levon to deliver a powerful examination of two unique men, each struggling with their own issues and challenges. While Levon and Lucky are on different financial levels and come from different backgrounds, Sean Baker's film slowly reveals how similar these two men truly are in the 'big city', as they each struggle to hold onto what is real in their lives. Each of these men's profession, which entails selling fakes for the genuine thing, serves as a symbolic representation of their personal lives, where each man goes through a journey to figure out what is real and what is fake in their lives. For Lucky, his lifestyle of hustling has enabled him to not take responsibility for his actions, and while the film doesn't state this in a straightforward way, it becomes clear as the film progresses that the truth of his life is this young child that he created. Levon's struggle is more centered around his faltering marriage, a 'green card'-inspired process that hasn't evolved past that stage. Levon's wife has grown tired of their forced relationship, though Levon himself is oblivious to the lie he is living. Typical of Sean Baker's work, Prince of Broadway does a fantastic job at making the environment its characters inhabit come to life - the honking cars, dingy street corners, constant movement, all working together to elaborately transport the viewer into this world. While I wouldn't say Prince of Broadway is as emotionally resonant as some of Baker's other efforts, it's another film full of moments of poignancy, delivering a powerful level of authenticity that isn't common in films today.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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