August 2019 – Reel Time With Richard Ades

Thrown-together fugitives become huckleberry friends

By Richard Ades

The name “Mark Twain” comes up in an early scene of The Peanut Butter Falcon. It happens when a nursing-home attendant runs into an unemployed fisherman named Tyler and asks if he’s seen the runaway she’s seeking. Rather than give her a straight answer, Tyler coyly suggests the escapee may be off on the kind of adventure Twain might have thought up.

That pretty much describes this warmhearted tale, which in many ways resembles an updated version of Huckleberry Finn.

To be sure, there are key differences. Rather than being a motherless boy and a runaway slave, the heroes are Tyler (Shia LaBeouf), who’s lost both his job and his brother, and Zak (Zach Gottsagen), a 22-year-old man with Down syndrome. Like their literary counterparts, though, they’re on a trek in search of freedom and happiness. At one point, they even commandeer a raft.

We first meet Zak when he’s living in a North Carolina facility for senior citizens—the only place the state could find for him after he was abandoned by his family. Sharing a room with the sympathetic Carl (Bruce Dern), he spends his evenings watching old wrestling videotapes and dreaming of becoming a wrestler himself. If only he can escape, he plans to learn grappling moves by enrolling in the school run by his hero, the Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church).

Despite the efforts of friendly attendant Eleanor (Dakota Johnson), Zak does escape and soon runs into Tyler, who is on the lam himself. Frustrated at his inability to obtain a crab-fishing license following his brother’s untimely death, Tyler has resorted to stealing from other fishermen’s traps. Beaten up for his efforts, he then retaliates by starting a fire that turns out to be more destructive than planned. He takes off in his boat, with two revenge-seeking fishermen in fierce pursuit.

It’s at this point that Tyler realizes Zak—a short, chubby man clad only in underwear—has been hiding on his boat. Thus begins a reluctant collaboration that eventually grows into a close friendship.

Co-writers and directors Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz tell the tale with warmth and wit. With help from a down-home musical score, they also do a good job of capturing the time (roughly the 1990s, judging from one character’s flip phone) and place (the coastal Carolinas and Georgia). The perfectly cast actors do the rest.

Despite playing a shotgun-toting character who’s down and out, LaBeouf projects grit and an undercurrent of decency. Whether he’s gruffly laying down the rules to his traveling companion or flirting with a woman who seems out of his league, you know he’s essentially a good guy.

As Eleanor, whose job requires her to track down Zak and bring him back to the nursing home whether he wants to go or not, Johnson combines a sense of duty with genuine caring.

But it’s Gottsagen’s portrayal of Zak that gives the film its soul. In fact, according to a producer who spoke at a preview screening, the whole film was built around the actor’s talents. As a mentally challenged man who’s determined to live the life he wants, not the one others have proscribed for him, Gottsagen paints an indelible portrait of naïve faith and brave determination.

Surprisingly, he’s also funny, with help from a script that knows how to laugh at someone’s foibles without ridiculing their challenges. In its respectful but non-pandering treatment of a person with disabilities, The Peanut Butter Falcon is a model of sensitivity.

Most of all, though, it’s a delightful and entertaining adventure—one that I’m already looking forward to seeing again.

Rating: 4½ stars (out of 5)

The Peanut Butter Falcon (PG-13) opens Aug. 23 at theaters nationwide.

Looking back on China’s ‘one child’ rule

By Richard Ades

From 1979 to 2015, China enforced a rigid policy that forbade most couples from having more than one child. The rule was intended to reverse the country’s exploding population growth, which was seen as a threat to plans for economic development.

One Child Nation, a documentary directed by the Chinese-born Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang, shows that the policy’s effects were long-lasting and horrifying.

With the help of archival footage, the film depicts the propaganda campaign China used to urge its people to abandon their tradition of large families. Billboards, theatrical performances and even playing cards helped to spread the message that population control was the key to prosperity.

As a result, many supported the policy, though some did so only out of fear or a sense of duty. Others tried to evade it and suffered disastrous consequences. Wang, who moved to the U.S. six years before giving birth to her own son, returns to her native village with camera in hand in an attempt to learn just what those consequences were.

Perhaps because she is seen as a local rather than an outsider, Wang is able to uncover some startlingly raw emotions.

A former village chief says he enforced the policy only because he had to, adding that he refused to take part in forced sterilizations of women after their first child. A former midwife feels guilt for performing such sterilizations—and for performing mandatory abortions so late in the pregnancy that, in her mind, they amounted to murder.

But not everyone feels such guilt. A woman who was lauded by the government for her role in “family planning” says the policy was justified despite its cost in misery and lives. “It was like fighting a war,” she says, according to the translated subtitles. “Death was inevitable.”

It quickly becomes apparent that the policy was complicated by many couples’ patriarchal wish for a son who could carry on the family name. Parents of girls often tried to evade the law, sometimes going so far as to abandon their daughters. The documentary traces the cost in terms of dead babies and a lucrative market for the adoption of Chinese “orphans”—a market in which government representatives were likely complicit.

One Child Nation is full of such shocking revelations. If it doesn’t attain the emotional arc of an effective work of fiction, it’s partly because some of the most painful details arrive early or midway through.

By the end, the film’s focus has shifted to a Utah couple’s attempt to connect Chinese children with previously unknown siblings who were basically sold on the foreign adoption market. It’s a worthy effort, but it’s one giant step removed from the nightmarish ordeal their parents went through in the name of progress.

Rating: 3½ stars (out of 5)

One Child Nation (rated R) opens Aug. 23 at the Gateway Film Center in Columbus.

The key to happiness: Listen to Springsteen

By Richard Ades

Blinded by the Light introduces us to Javed, a Pakistani-British teen who feels imprisoned by forces beyond his control. Those forces include immigrant-hating bullies and the weak economy of Margaret Thatcher’s UK in the late 1980s.

Worst of all, though, is Javed’s rigid father, who insists on dictating what his son does with his life. Dad’s pragmatic plans leave little room for Javed’s real love, writing, which he surreptitiously practices by writing poems that he shows to no one.

Then a fellow student turns Javed on to the music of Bruce Springsteen, and suddenly his outlook improves. After listening to the American rocker’s lyrical explosions of pain, anger and indomitability, he realizes he’s found a kindred spirit. With the Boss as his inspiration, he begins fighting for the kind of future he wants.

Admittedly, all this would come off as Pollyannaish and unbelievable if it were fiction. However, the fact that the film is inspired by the life of an actual person helps to transform it into an uplifting, if flawed, tale of the power of art and music.

Directed and co-written by Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham), the flick relies heavily on Viveik Kalra’s engaging portrayal of its struggling protagonist. Other young actors also are convincing, including Dean-Charles Chapman as Matt, Javed’s best friend; and Aaron Phagura as Roops, the Sikh who introduces him to Springsteen.

On the home front, Kulvinder Ghir adds a humorous edge that prevents Malik, the father, from turning into a total villain. Especially funny is Malik’s insistence that the key to Javed’s success is to copy the behavior of his Jewish classmates—advice that Javed quickly labels “racist.”

Blinded by the Light running — Joyously reacting to the music of the Boss are (from left) Eliza (Nell Williams), Roops (Aaron Phagura) and Javed (Viveik Kalra). (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

Also strong are the female members of the cast, though they mostly play one-note supporting roles (in more ways than one). Meera Ganatra is Javed’s hard-working mother, Nikita Mehta is his sympathetic sister, and Hayley Atwell is the teacher who pushes him to develop his writing talent. As the activism-minded student Eliza, Nell Williams has a similarly limited role, chiefly serving as Javed’s love interest.

Blinded by the Light’s best moments occur early on—when it introduces us to Javed’s soul-draining environment—and late, when it wraps up its crises in a satisfying way. In between, things are a little more problematic.

When Javed first hears Springsteen songs via a Walkman cassette deck, the film superimposes the words on walls and other parts of his environment. It’s a bit gimmicky, but it gets across the impact the words have on the teen.

Quite a bit sillier are various music video-like scenes in which people run or dance around joyfully in reaction to Springsteen songs. There are also moments that are too predictable or contrived to elicit the emotional response they seek.

Fortunately, the cast turns things around at the end by sticking the landing. The result is that we’re sent out of the theater with renewed faith in life, love, the future and the genius of a certain troubadour from New Jersey.

Rating: 3½ stars (out of 5)

Blinded by the Light (PG-13) opens Aug. 16 at theaters nationwide.

Women test sailing skills in globe-circling competition

Tracy Edwards (center) leads an all-woman crew around the world in the documentary *Maiden*. (Sony Pictures Classics)

By Richard Ades

For much of its existence, women had never competed in the Whitbread Round the World Race. In 1989, Tracy Edwards set out to change that by proving that female sailors were equally capable of circling the globe on wind power alone.

As the account of that groundbreaking venture, Maiden hits all the right notes and avoids all the wrong ones. Alex Holmes’s documentary is exciting and uplifting, yet relatable. Rather than placing its heroine on a feminist pedestal, it depicts her as a brave but flawed pioneer who battles sexism and her own demons while struggling to overcome her biggest foe: the ocean.

“The ocean is trying to kill you,” Edwards announces frankly at the doc’s beginning. Thanks to actual footage taken during her 33,000-mile journey—a journey that sends her all-woman crew through violent storms and iceberg-infested waters—we readily believe it.

But Holmes doesn’t jump right into the race. Instead, he prepares us for the ordeal by recounting the Edwards’s difficult but character-building early years.

Born in Southampton, England, she suffers her first trauma when she loses her doting father at the age of 10. When her mother’s remarriage leaves her at the mercy of an abusive stepfather, she ultimately runs away and immerses herself in the male-dominated world of sailing. By taking on menial jobs such as stewardess or cook, she earns access to men who can teach her the skills she will later put to good use.

Maiden cold — The crew suits up for a trip through frigid southern waters. (Sony Pictures Classics)

By the time Edwards and her crew have acquired a boat—a refurbished yacht they dub “Maiden”—and joined their male competitors at the race’s starting line, she has the know-how but not necessarily the self-confidence she needs for the task ahead. Nonetheless, she sets out to disprove the many chauvinist predictions that they will drop out early. She’s determined not only to finish the race but to come in first in their class.

As filmed by Jo Gooding, a childhood friend of Edwards who also serves as the boat’s cook, the nine-month race is shown to be a combination of frustration and terror, triumph and setback. It all culminates in a surprising realization that what they’ve been doing has meaning far beyond trophies or bragging rights. While they’ve been engaged in a lonely, isolated battle with the sea, it turns out, the world has been watching.

It’s a heartwarming ending to a stirring saga of courage and grit.

Rating: 4½ stars (out of 5)

Maiden (PG) opens Aug. 9 at the Gateway Film Center and AMC Lennox Town Center 24.