The Peanut Butter Falcon
The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019), written and directed by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz, is a modern American-southern-gothic with a story one might only expect from a classic Mark Twain novel. We’ve seen this genre in American literature, stage plays, and now becoming more captured in film, and I think The Peanut Butter Falcon is an example for other movies in the genre going forward.
We open with the main character, Zak (played by Zack Gottsagen), an orphaned down-syndromed-person, and his interactions with the staff and other folks as he attempts to escape this dreary retirement home that he has been thoughtlessly shoved into by a neglectful state government. Aside from a young caretaker, Elanor (played by Dakota Johnson), Zak is the only person here without white hair and he’s not treated all that well. He’s surviving but he’s not living. We know he wants to leave. He’s plotting his way out, putting on a face, giving an old woman his pudding in return to cause a scene so he can run. Immediately, we can tell so much about him, he’s stuck, looking to leave, he’s thoughtful and smart, and this was not his first attempt.
Tyler (played by Shia LaBeouf), the second main character we focus on, is revealed on a moving boat. Speeding, but to where? Between various crab catches that aren’t his, stealing the catch of other people’s work. Zak’s freedom is encroached on by the nurses and specifically the overseer in the old folks’ home, who acts and feels more like a prison warden, while Tyler evades the law and other crab fishermen, looking not to be locked up or beaten to a pulp. Both are desperate, both are looking for a life of their own both are looking to truly live. Story-wise they are already linked together, even before they meet once they’ve both kicked the hornet’s nest: Zak prying the bars off his window with the help of his ancient roommate (played by Bruce Dern) and Tyler burning down the dock with all the supplies of the other fishermen.
What is great about The Peanut Buter Falcon, is that the movie accurately depicts a down syndromed person and is hilarious without having the comedy be making fun on Zak or down syndrome in any way. It is truly a modern American-southern-gothic done well, the kind of story one expects to be a novel rather than a movie. Each character has their own quirks, set of internal and external needs and things they are running from or towards. This movie gives everyone their moments that we focus on, while still making it clear who our main character is.
The creators of the movie do a great job of setting things up, telling us information without using too direct exposition. The shots are diverse and purposefully used towards a greater direction and feeling, letting us get the beautiful gray by the waters of the rural Carolina coast.
The Peanut Butter Falcon perfectly blends the shit parts of this genre, all the bad things this genre recognizes and acknowledges, while looking at and still enjoying the good as well.
The land is harsh: cicadas cry, corn fields restrict our vision, swampland restricts the characters’ movement, the air looks hot, hazy, and muggy.
The people are harsh: slurs are used, Confederate flags are flown, guns are toted, strong gender norms are pushed. Kids make Zak swim when he can’t and call him names, but the old folks all want to help Zak escape, a shaky gas station clerk shares a bottle of hooch with a dirty stranger, a washed-up local superstar reclaims his morals from a dangerous place.
The music is twangy and soft. A general quiet makes all the little things meaningful, all the small moments, looks, smiles, and grimaces, which in turn all make the magnificent truly so. Gunshots and fire, withheld until the boiling point, hold their power in this movie, as does the extra half second between characters. Nilson and Schwartz have done a fantastic job at finding moments and allowing them to play out in all the time they need, something I think was only built upon by the relationship between Gottsagen, LaBeouf, and Johnson who all brought magnificently real people to life.
In the end, despite the retirement home still wanting to keep Zak imprisoned there and the crab fishermen all hating Tyler, the three characters escape the state together in that comforting yet somewhat nuclear, semi-toxic, cis-gender normality kind of way one finds in the American south. Men are men, women are women, the south is the south and the three of them are together in their odd little version of it.
August 17, 2020