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.
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Reviews
Just perfect...
I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
Great Film overall
A lot of fun.
The bravery of this man impressed me. He exposes himself totally in this documentary about the difficulties of running his farm in the midst of mental problems, struggling with drinking and living in the ruin of divorce and lost happiness. If you think that bravery is running away or solving things with being a macho man or by climbing to the top on the heads of your competitors, think again. This is real life, there are moments of happiness, but there are cracks (big), because that's how the light gets in (quote: Leonard Cohen).
I found this documentary on an organic farmer in Vermont who lives and farms alone in his latter years to be rich, moving, and informative. Surrounded by his beautiful acreage, he suffers all the same from loneliness, regret, and a sense of futility. Yet there are days when all 38 years of his efforts seem worth it. A fine character study, and an intriguing look at the life of a farmer in an age when most people live in urban settings and haven't a clue about what's involved in a life spent close to nature and the cycle of seasons.
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