Field of Dreams (1989)

Directed by Phil Alden Robinson. Starring Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta, Gaby Hoffman, Timothy Busfield, Burt Lancaster, Frank Whaley, Lee Garlington, Dwier Brown, Art LaFleur. [PG]

Sentimental crowd-pleasing fantasy on the subjects of fathers, sons, and the American pastime of baseball. Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella (Costner) hears an otherworldly voice out in the cornfields one night, telling him, “If you build it, he will come.” He takes this as a suggestion to plow a large patch of his crops and build a baseball field, which is soon after occupied by the ghosts of deceased ballplayers like “Shoeless” Joe Jackson (Liotta); further “divine inspirations” bring him to a reclusive author (Jones) modeled in part off of J. D. Salinger, and allow him to give a departed dreamer another shot at big league glory. Whether or not the viewer “goes the distance” with the material is as dependent on the person as it is the filmmaking. The picture doubtlessly contains its fair share of bathetic and sappy episodes (a late speech from Jones is cloying enough to earn jeers), and there’s almost no measure of logic sewing together its various breaks from reality, which includes time travel, form-altering apparitions, and (in the closing moments) some sort of marketing miracle? But it’s more heartfelt than manipulative, more shrewd than gimmicky; plus, the actors sell it well, the straightforward direction evades overwrought camera tricks and special effects to amplify the supernatural elements, and the conclusion rings of too much pure and universal emotion to be strictly defined as calculated treacle. Scripted by Robinson from a novel by W. P. Kinsella (“Shoeless Joe”). Final film for Lancaster in a small but pivotal role.

71/100