April 21, 1989 | It’s difficult, even more difficult than hitting a high, hard one into the stands at the Astrodome. And yet, somehow, the people who made a wonderful comedy-drama called Field of Dreams have accomplished the near-impossible: They have fashioned a seamless blend of the profound and the familiar, the fantastic and the matter-of-fact, without ever taking a false step or making a clumsy move.
Beautifully written and flawlessly acted, this is an altogether extraordinary movie about life, love, second chances and the Great American Pastime.
Much credit must go to the men behind the scenes: Phil Alden Robinson, the director who provided the overall vision and the sense of wonder, and W.P. Kinsella, whose highly praised novel Shoeless Joe was the inspiration for Robinson’s enchanting screenplay.
But the lion’s share of praise must go to Kevin Costner, who gives a subtle, extremely engaging and gracefully generous lead performance as Ray Kinsella, a common man who retains his straight-forward simplicity even as he plays his role in the most amazing events.
Ray and Annie (Amy Madigan), his wife, are idealists of the Big Chill generation. These days, however, their activist energies are channeled into the farm they have purchased in Iowa. (Theirs may well be the only farmhouse in the state where the living room is adorned with an Andy Warhol print of Marilyn Monroe.) Life with their young daughter, Karin, is simple, optimistic — and, during Ray’s dark nights of introspection, unfulfilling. “I’m 36 years old,” he tells his sympathetic wife. “I have a wife, a child, and a mortgage — and I’m afraid I’m turning into my father.”
So when Ray hears a mysterious voice in his cornfield, a magical bidding from the beyond, he is open to suggestion. The mesmerizing whisper: “If you build it, he will come.” Ray interprets this as a command to plow under much of his crop, and build a baseball field in its place. Annie is surprised, but supportive. Karin is curious. And then, one night, Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) ambles out of the cornfield and onto the diamond.
Shoeless Joe died more than 30 years ago, but he appears hale and hearty as he limbers up on Ray’s field. True, he’s still heartbroken over being banned from baseball after his alleged role in the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal. But he’s happy to be playing again, even though, like Ray, he cannot quite understand what’s going on.
“Is this heaven?” Shoeless Joe asks, hopefully. “No,” Ray replies with a bemused smile. “It’s Iowa.”
Situated somewhere between third base and The Twilight Zone, Field of Dreams is a modern-day fairy tale about a noble quest for a grand design. Shortly after some of Shoeless Joe’s teammates join him on the Iowa field, Ray gets another message that sends him on a cross-country journey. Along the way, he encounters a small-town doctor (Burt Lancaster) with a short-lived baseball past, and joins forces with a reclusive writer (James Earl Jones) who dropped out of the ‘60s and jumped into interactive software.
Terence Mann, the writer, gets a chance to jump-start his stalled idealism. Doc Graham gets a chance to fulfill a dream, and a reason to appreciate reality. And Ray? He finds redemption in his own back yard. Or, to be more precise, somewhere close to home plate.
At almost any moment, Field of Dreams could have turned impossibly sweet or gratingly whimsical. But the movie has a clear eye and a scrupulous logic as well as a soft heart. The magic, enhanced by James Horner’s music and John Lindley’s cinematography, is unveiled without flourish. The extraordinary is presented in a context of the ordinary. One thing simply leads to another, and the audience goes with the flow.
Costner’s performance does much to make the movie credible and compelling. At one point, Ray responds abruptly to a TV rerun of Harvey, in which a boozy James Stewart converses with his invisible friend, a 6-foot white rabbit. It’s a clever touch, considering Ray’s own experiences with the unseen. And it serves as a reminder of another movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, in which Stewart was another common fellow in the middle of magical events. Costner has much the same down-to-earth appeal and engaging boyishness as Stewart. Those attributes serve him, and the movie, very well.
Costner is strong enough to hold his own opposite some powerful screen presences. Better still, he is confident enough to turn the screen over to his co-stars whenever the plot calls for a shift in focus. As a result, Jones and Lancaster are given just enough room to be colorfully, vibrantly, larger than life. Madigan is sexy, feisty and fiercely intelligent in all the right measures. Liotta is, appropriately enough, haunting.
In the end, Field of Dreams goes straight for the heart, celebrating life as it is lived in those special moments best appreciated by fathers and sons. Yes, the movie is sentimental. No, you cannot resist its final moments. It takes a real movie to make real men cry with joy. All you real men out there — get out your handkerchiefs.
