REVIEWS
November 2019 | Sight&Sound | 77
Reviewed by Leigh Singer
Nobody needs to repeat the ‘R-word’ advice
from Robert Downey Jr’s know-all actor in
Tropic Thunder (2008) to make the point about
never playing a character with extreme mental
disabilities. Downey’s notorious if wryly
astute observation identified Hollywood’s self-
congratulatory comfort with seeing able-minded
actors playing – and often winning awards
for – the roles of more mildly intellectually
challenged protagonists (Tom Hanks’s Forrest
Gump, Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man and so
on) and its corresponding unease with more
severely impaired characters. What he and the
industry entirely missed for decades – Pascal
Duquenne’s joint best actor award at Cannes for
1996’s The Eighth Day aside – was the idea that
actors with these conditions might actually be
able to assume the roles themselves. And here’s
where The Peanut Butter Falcon, and Down’s
syndrome lead actor Zack Gottsagen, swoops in.
Having spotted his talents at a camp for disabled
actors some years ago, first-time writer-directors
Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz crafted a
story allowing Gottsagen’s guileless style to
flourish, and even to shape the film. At heart,
this is a simple picaresque, a buddy movie that
self-consciously riffs on Mark Twain’s Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn as it meanders through the
Carolinas’ landscapes and waterways. But Nilson
and Schwartz wisely linger on unpredictable
dialogue scenes and construct frequent wordless
montages of offbeat moments that feel culled
from patient camerawork. The results, belying
mawkish clichés, flow to its star’s unique cadences
and rhythms, fuelling many of the film’s strengths.
The humour and poignancy of wrestling-
obsessed Zak’s determination to meet his sports
idol and become a wrestler himself still requires
skilled, experienced pros for Gottsagen to spar
with, and this small indie project’s high-powered
ensemble includes grounded supporting turns
from Bruce Dern, John Hawkes and Thomas
Haden Church. Dakota Johnson’s carer Eleanor
Reviewed by Nick Pinkerton
Guy Nattiv’s Skin begins with an establishing shot
of a bridge over a river in Columbus, Ohio, that is
very clearly not taken in Columbus, Ohio – the
movie was in fact filmed in New York’s Hudson
Valley, which is made to double for a number of
Midwestern locations, as well as Nashville and
Richmond, Virginia. This isn’t necessarily an
unforgivable sin, just a clumsy instance of the
sort of cheats that films pull off all the time, and
won’t necessarily be noticeable to any viewer
who hasn’t had ample occasion to observe the
bend of the Scioto river. But it does point to an
indifference to finer points of detail that runs
throughout Nattiv’s misbegotten and maladroit
movie, which purports to offer insights into
an all-American culture of hate yet is wholly
insensate to the textures of American life.
Nattiv looks past such quotidian trifles, as he
has his sights set higher – that is, on addressing
race hate and the brotherhood of man and
all those sorts of things that win Oscars, one
of which Nattiv already has, for a 2018 short
called Skin, which thematically anticipates this
feature, concerned as it is with neo-Nazis and
body art. Going one better for prestige points,
the long-form Skin is Inspired by True Events,
drawing on the story of the relationship between
black activist Daryle Lamont Jenkins and
reformed racist skinhead Bryon Widner, whose
conversion and facial tattoo removal were the
subject of the 2011 documentary Erasing Hate.
Widner is played by Jamie Bell, who, having
evidently put in a creditable amount of time in
the makeup chair each morning, does indeed
look very convincingly inked up. Practically
everything else in the film is phonier than
temporary tattoos, if not outright nonsensical.
Why, for example, does Bryon’s love interest Julie
(Danielle Macdonald), who is shortly thereafter
established as trying to put distance between
herself and her white supremacist past and secure
a safe future for her children, expose them to a
neo-Nazi powwow and have them perform an
acoustic set in European peasant garb? The excuse
is a pay cheque, though her brood would almost
certainly do better on the fairground circuit; the
real reason is to elicit memories of the brief viral
celebrity of adolescent white nationalist duo
Prussian Blue. Aside from repeat viewings of
Romper Stomper (1992), evoked in some raucous
early scenes, the film’s knowledge of neo-Nazi
social culture comes from the distance of
a search bar, and its sense for the no-hoper
is underwritten and mostly passive, but her
scenes with Gottsagen ripple with winning
spontaneity. Most impressive, necessarily so,
is Shia LaBeouf as Zak’s partner in crime Tyler.
Whatever the actor’s offscreen turbulence, here he
shows again that when offered gritty, immersive
work opposite inexperienced newcomers (see
also Andrea Arnold’s American Honey), he’s a
generous, instinctive character actor. Though
social commentary and backstory are kept to a
minimum, the glimpses and asides offered up
by Zak and on-the-lam crab fisherman Tyler
are a damning indictment of how America’s
marginalised slip through the cracks. Even Eleanor,
who cares for Zak, can do no better for him than
keep him in a stultifying retirement home.
Bar the odd mobile phone, Nilson and
Schwartz are clearly aiming for, if don’t entirely
earn, a timeless, mythical feel. Nigel Bluck’s
cinematography favours clean, handsome
wide shots, allowing the natural beauty of the
Carolinas’ bayous and deltas to shine through.
And the lively bluegrass and blues score keeps
the modest action ticking over. A late climactic
shift into full-blown magic realism may seem
an easy way out. But given the rarity of an actor
such as Gottsagen being front and centre in a
charming, feelgood fable like this, one could argue
that The Peanut Butter Falcon’s sheer existence
is already magical thinking taken flight.
The Peanut Butter Falcon
USA 2019
Directors: Tyler Nilson, Michael Schwartz
Certificate 12A 97m 5s
Skin
USA/People’s Republic of China 2019
Director: Guy Nattiv
Certificate 15 118m 26s
North Carolina, the present. Zak, a young man with
Down’s syndrome, dreams of fleeing the nursing home
where he lives and becoming a wrestler like his hero,
the Salt Water Redneck. After his elderly roommate
Carl helps him escape, Zak stows away on a boat stolen
by crab fisherman Tyler. Tyler, abandoned since his
older brother’s death, ekes out a living by stealing the
catches of rival fisherman Duncan, who pursues him,
vowing revenge. Tyler, who is on his way to Florida, has no
intention of taking Zak with him. However, he meets Zak’s
carer Eleanor in a convenience store; she is desperate to
find Zak and return him to the nursing home. Realising
that he is a fugitive too, Tyler agrees to take Zak with
him and drop him off at Salt Water’s wrestling school.
Tyler and Zak bond. Tyler trains him and they
invent Zak’s wrestler name, ‘The Peanut Butter Falcon’.
Eleanor finds the pair and tries to take Zak back, but
he throws her car keys into the sea. She reluctantly
accompanies them by raft to find Salt Water. Duncan
and his henchman find them too, but Zak scares them
off with Tyler’s gun. The trio eventually find Salt Water;
he is long retired but agrees to help Zak, arranging
a wrestling bout for him against another retired pro.
Zak defeats his opponent and Duncan attacks Tyler.
Eleanor, Zak and an injured Tyler continue
their journey to Florida together.
Produced by
Albert Berger
Ron Yerxa
Christopher Lemole
Tim Zajaros
Lije Sarki
David Thies
Written by
Tyler Nilson
Michael Schwartz
Director of
Photography
Nigel Bluck
Edited by
Kevin Tent
Nat Fuller
Production Designer
Gabrael Wilson
Original Score
Composed by
Jonathan Sadoff
Zachary Dawes
Noam Pikelny
Gabe Witcher
Production
Sound Mixer
Kevin Strahm
Costume Designer
Melissa Walker
Stunt Co-ordinator
Michael Long
©PBF Movie, LLC
Production
Companies
Roadside Attractions
and Armory Films
present in association
with Endeavor
Content an Armory
Films/Bona Fide
production
A film by Lucky
Treehouse
A 1993 and
Tvacom Film and
TV production
Executive Producers
Manu Gargi
Aaron Scotti
Timothy Shriver
Anthony K. Shriver
Michelle Sie Whitten
Carmella Casinelli
Cast
Shia LaBeouf
Tyler
Dakota Johnson
Eleanor
John Hawkes
Duncan
Bruce Dern
Carl
Zack Gottsagen
Zak, ‘The Peanut
Butter Falcon’
Jon Bernthal
Mark
Thomas Haden
Church
Clint, ‘The Salt
Water Redneck’
Yelawolf
Ratboy
Wayne DeHart
Blind Jasper John
Jake ‘The Snake’
Roberts
Sam
Mick Foley
Jacob
In Colour
[2.35:1]
Distributor
Signature
Entertainment
Fight or flight: Zack Gottsagen, Shia LaBeouf
Credits and Synopsis
Tattoo you: Jamie Bell
A RT
PRODUCTION
CLIENT
SUBS
REPRO OP
VERSION
Reviews, 20
