AN IOWA FARMER REPLACES PART OF HIS CROP WITH A BASEBALL DIAMOND TO BRING TOGETHER A TEAM OF BASEBALL HEROES FROM THE PAST. FEATURES DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY AND BEHIND-THE-SCENES FOOTAGE.A phenomenal hit when it was released in 1989, Field of Dreams has become a modern classic and a uniquely American slice of cinema. It functions effectively as a moving drama about the power of dreams, a fantasy ode to our national pastime, and a brilliant adaptation of W.P. Kinsella’s exquisite baseball novel Shoeless Joe. Kinsella himself found the film a delightful surprise, differing greatly from his novel but benefiting from its own creative variations. It is the film that cemented Kevin Costner’s status as an all-American screen star, but the story resonates far beyond Costner’s handsome appeal. As just about everyone knows by now, Costner stars as Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella, who hears the mysterious words “If you build it, he will come,” and is compelled to build a baseball diamond in the middle of his cornfield. His wife (Amy Madigan) supports the wild idea, but a reclusive novelist (modeled after J.D. Salinger and played by James Earl Jones) is not so easily persuaded. The idealistic farmer is either a visionary or a deluded fool, but his persistence is rewarded when spirits from baseball’s past begin appearing on the ball field. Past and present intermingle in the person of “Moonlight Graham” (superbly played by Burt Lancaster), an unknown player who sacrificed his dreams of baseball glory for a dignified life as a small-town physician … but what all of this means is unclear until the film’s memorably heartfelt conclusion. A meditation on family, memory, and faith, the film balances humor and magic to strike just the right chord of thoughtful emotion, affecting audiences so deeply that the baseball field created for the production has now become a mecca of sorts for dreamers around the world. Universal’s widescreen Collector’s Edition DVD is a real treat, offering extensive production notes, full-length commentary by writer-director Phil Alden Robinson, and the extensive behind-the-scenes documentary The Making of Field of Dreams. –Jeff ShannonA phenomenal hit when it was released in 1989, Field of Dreams has become a modern classic and a uniquely American slice of cinema. It functions effectively as a moving drama about the power of dreams, a fantasy ode to our national pastime, and a brilliant adaptation of W.P. Kinsella’s exquisite baseball novel Shoeless Joe. Kinsella himself found the film a delightful surprise, differing greatly from his novel but benefiting from its own creative variations. It is the film that cemented Kevin Costner’s status as an all-American screen star, but the story resonates far beyond Costner’s handsome appeal. As just about everyone knows by now, Costner stars as Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella, who hears the mysterious words “If you build it, he will come,” and is compelled to build a baseball diamond in the middle of his cornfield. His wife (Amy Madigan) supports the wild idea, but a reclusive novelist (modeled after J.D. Salinger and played by James Earl Jones) is not so easily persuaded. The idealistic farmer is either a visionary or a deluded fool, but his persistence is rewarded when spirits from baseball’s past begin appearing on the ball field. Past and present intermingle in the person of “Moonlight Graham” (superbly played by Burt Lancaster), an unknown player who sacrificed his dreams of baseball glory for a dignified life as a small-town physician … but what all of this means is unclear until the film’s memorably heartfelt conclusion. A meditation on family, memory, and faith, the film balances humor and magic to strike just the right chord of thoughtful emotion, affecting audiences so deeply that the baseball field created for the production has now become a mecca of sorts for dreamers around the world. –Jeff Shannon
Buy “Field of Dreams “ For Only $6.19
February 18, 2006
#1
On the surface, Field of Dreams is about the loss of American innocence and the attempt to find healing
and wholeness: Kevin Costner plays a baby boomer who, like many of that era, fell out of favour with his
father through the course of the turbulent 60s. Costner marries a fellow 60s student traveller and finds
himself in a sort of self-imposed exile as a farmer in rural Iowa. One day, as he is in his corn field, he hears
a voice that tells him to Build it and he will come. Costner eventually intuits that this mysterious voice and
instruction is connected to he and his father’s never having resolved their growing apart. Costner then
determines that what he is supposed to do is build a baseball field in his corn field and his father’s favourite
player, Shoeless Joe Jackson, will appear. On the surface, Jackson, a member of the White Sox team that
threw a world series, represents the tie and bond between father and son and serves as a source of the
re-discovery of what is elemental and good about America as supposedly manifested in baseball. Here,
however, is where the cryptocracy of Hollywood uses subtle symbolic archetypal imagery to affect a more
sinister processing of the Societal Mind. The set-up begins with a loss of innocence, a Fall, where the son
is alienated from the Father. Shoeless Joe Jackson, describe in the movie as the most elegant and dazzling
player, is essentially Lucifer, a favoured angel that falls and eventually causes a rupture between God and
Mankind. In Hollywood gnostic — kaballistic — masonic manipulation, however, Shoeless Joe is unjustly
condemned. After Costner builds his field and Shoeless Joe arrives, played by Roy Liotta, he tells Costner
there are more players coming, since he represents only one player of a team of nine. This number is roughly
one third of a baseball team, one third being the percentage of angels in Heaven that fell with Lucifer
according to the Holy tradition of the Church. The townspeople consider Costner crazy since only he and
his family can see the players out on the field, indicating the fact that the others have not yet been initiated.
At this point, Costner receives another message which takes him in a search for a J.D. Salingeresque figure
who wrote brillant, mind-expanding novels in the 60s but has since fallen silent. This character is played
by James Earl Jones which provides an alchemical element of black and white to the set-up. Here, Jones
would seem to be the magus who will provide the alchemical initiation for the New Age. Once back home,
as foretold by the original voice and Jones’ character toward the end, masses of people turn off the highway
running by Costner’s rural farm to see the Black Sox play again. Build it and he will come sounds like a
recipe for building the political spiritual order necessary for the appearance of the fallen and their human agent
as prophesied in Daniel and Revelation. The Hollywood cryptocracy has once again produced a coded
movie that at its core slanders the Truth of the Gospel of Christ by a subtle means of pyschological processing
whereby people open themselves up to this false New Age and its promises.
February 18, 2006
#2
Oh, Come On! A guy who builds a ballpark in a corn field because voices told him to should be locked up, not celebrated! Especially if he builds it for ghosts to play on. Come on! That’s so stupid. And then at the end where everybody’s coming from miles around to watch a game they can’t even see? That makes no sense at all! And I don’t like movies that make Christians look like jerks.
Why couldn’t Kevin Costner just make Bull Durham 2? That would have been much better.
Bull Durham was a good movie.
February 18, 2006
#3
It’s a Costner movie so don’t expect great acting
Stupid plot. Kill crops for a stupid baseball field. Think of the families or starving children in some stupid African country those crops would have fed.
Who cares about some ghost that wants to play baseball. Waste of time. If u like Feel Good moveis that don’t make sense and lose any sense of reality and have and hour or 2 to waste, see this film now!
Stupid movie
February 18, 2006
#4
This movie was so stupid, I was mad at myself for wasting 2 hours of my life, that I can’t get back, oh this movie is just so bad, I can’t fit all the horrible things about it. Field Of Dreams just is every bad cliche of every bad film all rolled up onto one pitifully cliched film. AWFUL, I think this is right up there as one of the worst filsm of all time, but unlike the other worst films of all time, which most have some camp value, thsi just plain stinks.
February 18, 2006
#5
Allright I’ve read almost every review about this movie, and I must say I’m certainly surprised about how many good reviews it got. I practically fell asleep during this movie, thats how dumb and boring it was! This is one of those movies you watch that starts out slow, but like a fool you just keep watching hoping it will get better. Well I must say it did not get better it only got worse. The reason I even gave it two stars is because it had Kevin Costner in it. If your looking for a good movie you can look elsewhere. It was certainly a waste of my time. Of course thats my opinion. Like I said there were alot of people that gave this movie 5 stars.