{"id":163549,"date":"2016-10-27T12:27:54","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T19:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shockya.com\/news\/?p=163549"},"modified":"2016-10-27T12:27:54","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T19:27:54","slug":"peter-and-the-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shockya.com\/news\/2016\/10\/27\/peter-and-the-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter and the Farm Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

PETER AND THE FARM<\/a><\/strong>
\nMagnolia Pictures<\/strong>
\nReviewed by: Harvey Karten, Shockya<\/strong>
\nGrade: B<\/strong>
\nDirector:\u00a0 Tony Stone<\/a><\/strong>
\nWritten by: Tony Stone<\/strong>
\nCast: Peter Dunning<\/strong>
\nScreened at: Review 1, NYC, 10\/26\/16<\/strong>
\nOpens: November 4, 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

If I were asked to name two charismatic people from the idyllic state of Vermont, I would proudly answer:\u00a0 Bernie Sanders and Peter Dunning.\u00a0 The former is an older man whose message and delivery are magnetic enough to draw in a prime target of young people.\u00a0 Bernie is a democratic socialist who believes that people do best when they work together and take responsibility for one another well beyond the needs of their immediate families.\u00a0 Peter, on the other hand, is a farmer whose life has been led largely as an independent provider of organic beef, lamb and pork, and whose existence became even more solitary when his wife left him and his children will not even pick up the phone when he calls.<\/p>\n

And charisma is what\u2019s needed when you\u2019re indulging basically in a one-person philosophic session on the big screen.\u00a0 This is the sort of art that does best on the legitimate stage, but what off-Broadway house can fit a few dozen sheep, a handful of cows, a gaggle of geese or ducks, and some intelligent four-legged creatures that eat like pigs?<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a patron of Whole Foods or part of the one percent of the American population that insist on grass-fed, organic beef, \u201cPeter and the Farm\u201d will show you all about what goes into the preparation of that dish and then some.\u00a0 The \u201cand then some\u201d is the principal point as writer-director Tony Stone follows Peter Dunning around as the farmer shows that harvesting hay with John Deere\u00a0 wheels looks like fun but is a lot more complicated.\u00a0 He should know.\u00a0 He\u2019s had thirty-five years\u2019 experience building some 170 acres from scratch, even showing us in the movie audience not only how he gave birth to the land but where in his domain two of his children were conceived.<\/p>\n

Despite the 15 minutes, or rather 92 minutes of fame that Tony Stone is giving to the 68-year-old farmer with a thick head of gray hair and an Old Testament beard, Dunning is depressed.\u00a0 At least, his most philosophic moments come at us during these introspective phases, as when he informs us that if the time should come, he would leave this Earth through some contraption that would allow him to bang his head on a rock.<\/p>\n

Dunning\u2019s life has taken him as far from the boutique hotels of New York\u2019s SoHo district and the frazzled crowds of Times Square that you can get.\u00a0 Though we don\u2019t see the farmers\u2019 markets that he may use to sell his meats or the middlemen who might purchase his product, we do get to note the one part that might dismay those moviegoers who still think that meat is born in cellophane wrappings at Walmart.\u00a0 After calling his sheep together through a shout unique to the furry creatures\u2014and using the help of his faithful dog which must have at least a trace of Border Collie in his genes\u2014he takes one aside, straddles his head, puts a rifle bullet into his head, and shears the coat in minutes. In fact absent needed fumigation, the wool looks ready to be put on immediately.\u00a0 If you think there\u2019s something disturbing about this assassination, remember that the cows and ducks and geese better scurry if they find themselves in a factory farm where ConAgra treats them as though they\u2019re machines rather than living, breathing creatures with emotions not much unlike those of a human being.<\/p>\n

If you choose, however, to look away at Dunning\u2019s killing of a sheep or castration of a cow, you can still dig the man\u2019s introspection about his boozing background, as when on R&R with Marine pals at Honolulu he would sell his plasma monthly and use the $5 blood money for liquor.\u00a0 He may not have to worry about getting too fat on all that meat since during the filming of this doc, he keeps busy threshing, feeding animals, lecturing about how the seeds in one ear of corn could populate the acreage of Kansas.\u00a0 There you have it: Peter Dunning, filmed with dirt under his nails\u2014or least the nails he was able to maintain since a horrible accident decades ago\u2014gives us a picture of one of the last of the breed.\u00a0 He\u2019s doing the kind of work that, believe it or not, 90% of Americans were involved in just a couple of centuries ago, and takes a stand against the corruption of big business with its genetically modified output, \u201cshoving into our mouths whatever the corporations fell like doing.\u201d\u00a0 Nathan Corbin and the director do the photography which is put together by Maxwell Paparella in the editor\u2019s chair.<\/p>\n

Unrated.\u00a0 92 minutes.\u00a0 \u00a9 Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online<\/strong><\/p>\n

Story \u2013 B<\/strong>
\nActing \u2013 B+<\/strong>
\nTechnical \u2013 B<\/strong>
\nOverall – A<\/strong><\/p>\n