The Beauty of Connection: The Peanut Butter Falcon
If I had to pinpoint a genre/ premise that I never seem to get bored of, I’d be down to two options. The first would be coming of age, and the second would be a buddy comedy. Both genres are one of a kind, and if the film is done well, it leaves you with a perspective or a thought, something that you wouldn’t have thought about before. My favorite kind of film, is when it gets the mix of a buddy comedy and a coming of age film, just right. There’s a whole lot of examples of movies like that. From the classics of Dumb and Dumber, Dil Chahta Hai to films like ZNMD and the Intern, this is a film mix that keeps on giving. One of the best movies of the last decade, that’s got this mix absolutely right is Peanut Butter Falcon.
Peanut Butter Falcon is the film equivalent of a giant panda bear giving you a hug. It revolves around, Zak(Zack Gottsagen) a man who is diagnosed with down syndrome. Zak dreams of being a professional wrestler, and spends all his free time rewatching old tapes of a wrestler called as Salt Water Redneck. At the other end of the things is Tyler (Shia LaBeouf) a man who gets into trouble for bringing in crabs from another fisherman’s nest, and in a fit of rage burns down the competitor’s fishing cages.
The film begins with Zak, trying to escape his assisted living facility somewhere in Georgia, and failing to do so. Upon further questioning by his caretaker Eleanor (Dakota Johnson), he reveals his dreams of wanting to join Salt Walter Redneck’s wrestling school in Ayden, North Carolina. We learn of Zak’s circumstances in that scene, where Eleanor tells him, that the only people he has are the ones in the assisted living facility. His parents abandoned him and the state had to put him here, so that his basic needs could be met.
In a spur of the moment action, Zak escapes from the living facility the very same night wearing only his underwear. He finds shelter in a boat, and as fate would have it, it is the very same boat Tyler is using to escape from the angry group of fishermen looking for him. They have a interaction that makes Tyler panic, for he’s never seen someone like Zak before.
In the beginning, Tyler even abandons him the first chance he gets. He’s on the run, and a person like Zak, slow and filled with a childlike innocence, scares him. He’s not ready for that responsibility just yet.
But after he finds out that there’s roadblocks and hordes of people looking at him, Tyler decides that the only way out is through the fields and the sea. He retraces his steps, only to find Zak, being bullied by another kid and being forced to jump from a big height, out onto the sea below.
Tyler jumps in to save him, and drags him out. He tells Zak, that he can only join him, because he’s on the way to Florida, and North Carolina is just on the way. As they walk down the road together, in no time, there is a certain level of carmaderie they develop. They develop their own secret handshake, for special moments. They experiment with peanut butter by dipping it into all the food they can find. And in a spirited mood, Tyler also begins to teach Zak how to wrestle.
On one end, Tyler himself is going through an emotional crisis. He’s dealing with the death of his elder brother, and clearly blames himself for his unfortunate death. He feels like a failure, and looks at the world, like it’s a broken place where good people are punished and the bad ones benefit despite being the bad ones.
There’s not a lot one can do, when you blame the circumstances and only the circumstances you’re in. That realisation comes to Tyler real quick as he begins to learn of the circumstances Zak has gone through as well. To Zak, he’s never felt the love of his parents or a sibling. To him his only family has been his group at the center and Elanor, who was his caregiver. Yet he possesses one of the most beautiful traits, one could have. Hope.
As they head towards North Carolina, they also meet a blind man, who helps them build a raft .As they sail on the raft, the feel of these scenes feels like something out of a Mark Twain story, or to be more specific it feels like a scene out of Huckleberry Finn.
Another thing the movie gets right, which is probably one of its bigger points, is the way they’ve addressed the genetic disorder of down syndrome. Too many times, genetic disorders in films and media are not given the correct representation and they end up creating a lot of misconceptions instead of awareness. Directors Tyler Nilson and Micheal Shwartz treat the character of Zak wonderfully, and at no point create an atmosphere where we look at Zak as someone who’s not like the rest of us.
As a kid, one of the most fascinating things for me was my mom’s workplace at Spastics Society of India. My mom was a special educator and she had kids in her class with cerebral palsy, down syndrome, austism among other things. What I loved about their organisation was the absolute amount of oppuritinity they provided to anyone who faced an handicap.As an organisation, they want above and beyond, their students, and while watching Tyler teach Zak how to wrestle, it reminded me of the whole fraternity of the wonderful organisation.
At the core of it, this film is all about connection. We as humans sometimes tend to pride ourselves in our independence, in our ability to do things by ourselves. But what we cannot possibly ignore, is how good connections can really make life worth living. We all need companionship. We all go through bad times, and what helps us through bad times is paying attention to all the good that we’ve got.
