The New Yorker & Me: Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz's Wonderful "The Peanut Butter Falcon"

Introduction

What is The New Yorker? I know it’s a great magazine and that it’s a tremendous source of pleasure in my life. But what exactly is it? This blog’s premise is that The New Yorker is a work of art, as worthy of comment and analysis as, say, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Each week I review one or more aspects of the magazine’s latest issue. I suppose it’s possible to describe and analyze an entire issue, but I prefer to keep my reviews brief, and so I usually focus on just one or two pieces, to explore in each the signature style of its author. A piece by Nick Paumgarten is not like a piece by Jill Lepore, and neither is like a piece by Ian Frazier. One could not mistake Collins for Seabrook, or Bilger for Goldfield, or Mogelson for Kolbert. Each has found a style, and it is that style that I respond to as I read, and want to understand and describe.

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz's Wonderful "The Peanut Butter Falcon"

A few nights ago, I watched Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz’s The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019) on crave.ca. I enjoyed it immensely. For an excellent capsule review of this movie, I recommend The New Yorker’s “Goings On About Town” note by Bruce Diones. Here it is in full:

Zack Gottsagen, an actor with Down syndrome, stars in this affectionate drama as Zak, a young man with the same condition, who escapes from the Georgia nursing home where he lives in order to search for a professional-wrestling camp that he wants to enroll in. Along the way, he meets a small-time tidewater fisherman on the run (Shia LaBeouf), who reluctantly agrees to help him in his search. As their rafting trip begins, a nursing-home attendant (Dakota Johnson) looking for Zak catches up with them and eventually agrees to become a part of the adventure. The trio meet colorful characters in the course of this journey through photogenic landscapes (the cinematography is by Nigel Bluck). Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz wrote and directed the film; despite their screenplay’s clichés, they don’t let life-lesson dialogue distract from the genial Mark Twain-esque settings. Both Gottsagen and Johnson deliver endearing performances, and LaBeouf’s scruffy, ramshackle manner lifts the film above its predictable roots into something lived-in and surprisingly memorable.