The Peanut Butter Falcon (Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz, 2019)

The Peanut Butter Falcon is a breath-taking film that is very unique to any I’ve seen before. The reality of this film mingles with fantasy creating a real world where anything is possible. Zak and Tyler embark on an unlikely adventure to find the ‘Saltwater Redneck,’ a wrestling champion and more importantly Zak’s hero. And yet the most important thing they find is their relationship that develops into a brotherhood throughout the film. This relationship isn’t one of guidance for Zak, but more a necessary relationship for the both of them. While Zak needs help living in the real world alone for the first time, Tyler needs him to repair himself after the death of his older brother. The scene on the handmade raft where they are drifting across a serene lake and Zak says he is going to give Tyler all the wishes for his birthday, and embraces him like a brother shows this brotherly moment. This is when I realised that they both needed each other equally. In this way, the representation in this film of a man with down-syndrome is the most realistic it could have been. He is just another human trying to get by in this world, following his dreams without any worries of being held back by his disability. Every single performance in this film was so raw and real, Shia LaBeouf and Zack Gottsagen are incredibly funny, lovable and smart, which made this film all the more enjoyable to watch. So really this film made me want to go out and “do something called living” and that is why I loved it so much.

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