Peter and the Farm

Stone and his crew get the audience hooked on the mystery of this charismatic crank, and then take their time before they answer some of the bigger questions.

Transfixing in its workplace detail and haunting in its harsh commentary on a solitary existence.

Peter and the Farm is ultimately a portrait of whatever the opposite of “getting back to nature” is: the cycle of the land as a circle of hell.

Dunning recounts spellbinding tales that led to the gradual downfall of his expansive Mile Hill Farm, and the destruction of his two marriages.

The vast majority of us are so far removed from any common farming past that we idealize it and the people who live that lifestyle. Peter and the Farm is a sober reminder of how hard and callous that life is, and will come as a shock to anybody with romantic dreams of “chucking it all” to live off the land.

This is one tortured soul, and a rare case in which a farmer’s struggles seem to be entirely of his own making.

Dunning is a documentarian’s wet dream, as honest and forthcoming as he is eagerly collaborative, which makes for a wildly entertaining, if occasionally self-indulgent experience.