Well, I usually watch something poignant and profound and something that lingers long after movie finish, I guess it's just Sunday late afternoon's mood.
So, when I see this title, I immediately play the documentary. Note that for almost 99% of the content I watch like movies and series and all, I always read IMDb reviews and ratings. But, why I play this documentary instantly because, I can relate to it, how? Well, first we friends purchased a ranch some 7 years back, and to be honest, before we own the ranch, we didn't have a clue about how beautiful they look for passers-by while traveling country side,but how much work, what kind of hard life it is, we only know when we live that life.
That's one the reason I played to see what does it present.
To my surprise it did show the harsh reality of farm life, farmer life and how hard they work, every day, in harsh weather.
Because, in farming, you constantly fight with one element, that is nature. People like me who lives in urban areas with a nice front yard and back yard, which mowed down by lawn mower every other week and the nice climate control house, never able to understand how hard is to fight the nature when it start taking over things, when you don't keep it in check.
Here we see a Peter, a genius, an eccentric, who spend almost all his life on his farm and entirely dedicated his life to farming. His knowledge is like an encyclopedia of farming. To be honest, while watching this documentary, I really feel like going to his farm spend a few months and get all his knowledge about farming.
At the top of that, I said he was an eccentric, because he pushed people away and now he is old, alcoholic and ALONE.
I know, how it felt to be in those big spaces which runs in acres, with just a few lights and a house with total silent and you don't have anyone to talk. I experience that, when I had to spend few nights in my farm unfortunately alone because I stuck there and at that time I feel the horrors of the night life of a farm when you're alone in the dark, with just your animals and acres of land.
I can't imagine how would Peter survives all those years alone in that farm? And that also explains his mental health issues and talking about committing suicide. During day time he was almost busy, but nights must be haunting for him unless he drunk himself to sleep.
The farm that looks so picturesque and beatutiful during the day, would be scary and haunting during nights.
The documentary potrait Peter and his farm which is like two bodies and one soul, you can take out Peter from the farm or farm out of Peter.
In the end, the documentary was really, sad, tragic, one person stuggle to keep everything together or in the process of having its own way, destroyed his own life by isolating himself from the world. Pushed the loved one away, though he was angry, having drinking problem and an eccentric personality, you still feel sad for him.
Peter and the Farm
2016
Action / Biography / Documentary
Peter and the Farm
2016
Action / Biography / Documentary
Plot summary
Peter Dunning is a rugged individualist in the extreme, a hard-drinking loner and former artist who has burned bridges with his wives and children and whose only company, even on harsh winter nights, are the sheep, cows, and pigs he tends on his Vermont farm. Peter is also one of the most complicated, sympathetic documentary subjects to come along in some time, a product of the 1960s counterculture whose poetic idealism has since soured. For all his candor, he slips into drunken self-destructive habits, cursing the splendors of a pastoral landscape that he has spent decades nurturing.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
July 24, 2021 at 06:20 AM
Director
Top cast
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720p.WEB 1080p.WEBMovie Reviews
Farm and Farm life up close
Amazing.
Having grown up on a farm and on/off worked in agriculture for most of my adult life, I'm always drawn to check these types of documentaries out, but often find myself moving on rather quickly due to the romanticization. Most are so far detached from reality it isn't even funny; all the good parts and none of the bad. None of penny-pinching that so often plagues small farming operations while the massive operations get bail-out after bail-out, commit insurance fraud out in the open to no consequences and so on and so forth.
There is no sugarcoating here. Peter is like if Charles Bukowski had decided to become a farmer instead of a writer. Similarities don't stop there -- Peter himself is quite the artist with painting, drawing, sculpturing and even poetry. He's eccentric and destructive -- and depressed to a sometimes grotesque degree.
I don't recommend it for those with uneasy stomachs. Or anyone with a meal in front of them, for that matter. But if you're at all interested in how an old alcoholic brimming with demons lives out his day-to-day in rural Vermont on a beautifully rustic, scenic farm, this is absolutely the documentary for you.