FIELD OF DREAMS
A film review by Jeff Meyer
Copyright 1989 Jeff Meyer
Summary: The Best Film of the Year (so far)
No, I'm not a baseball fan, and yes, maybe this film is a bit too Utopian for some of you. That's your problem. There is no film I've seen this year that I've enjoyed more than FIELD OF DREAMS; it combines an absolute sterling story and script with excellent performances, and I enjoyed the living daylights out of it.
First the story -- and don't worry, I'd feel criminal if I gave anything away. All I'll say is that it's about a novice farmer in Iowa who hears voices in his cornfield, and it weaves heaven, nature and baseball in and out of one of the most graceful plot designs I've seen placed on the screen. I can tell you what it has in it, though. It's got a basic plot that twirls around on about 6 different axes, each independent but linked to the others, each beautiful in its own right, each culminating in a resolution (actually, the same resolution) and each catching me completely off-guard when it touched down. It has characters who get their personalities across in about three minutes (aided by some very skillful actors); I found them uncommonly easy to laugh with and impossible to forget. It contains some of the most beautiful images I can remember, looked for in a place few others would give a second glance to. And it has more imagination and creativity than any fifteen films out there today.
The actors uniformly absorb the spirit of their characters and literally radiate them out. I kept wondering if Costner's role in BULL DURHAM would slide over to FIELD OF DREAMS, on my part or on his. It doesn't; he is a character the others react to, and when he finally has the spotlight... well, it's a fine thing to see, a fine thing. Amy Madigan has *never* been better; she juices her role into three-dimensionality in about thirty seconds. A delight! James Earl Jones is absolutely a pleasure to watch; his unrolling of his character from the tight, cynical ball it arrives in was a pleasure in itself. The players are all good, especially Ray Liota as Shoeless Joe (certainly a change in roles for him), and Burt Lancaster is himself, which should be enough. Only the guy from "thirty-something" seemed stuck in a rather deadpan manner as the heavy, but that's really having to scratch at the dirt for criticisms.
This is a picture of dreams, of images, of men fading into the shadowed green of a cornfield, and of white spheres fading into the dusk beyond the lights. It's romantic, and hopeful and it believes in magic and family and baseball. And probably Mom. I don't know about apple pie, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
What do I give it? An A. $6 movie. Go for it.
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
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