The director, Phil Alden Robinson, and the writer, W. Instead, the movie depends on a poetic vision to make its point. But there is not a corny, stupid payoff at the end. There is, of course, the usual business about how the bank thinks the farmer has gone haywire and wants to foreclose on his mortgage (the Capra and Stewart movies always had evil bankers in them). The movie sensibly never tries to make the slightest explanation for the strange events that happen after the diamond is constructed. (I’m grateful I knew nothing about the movie when I went to see it, but the ads give away the Shoeless Joe angle.) Let it be said that Annie supports her husband’s vision, and that he finds it necessary to travel east to Boston so that he can enlist the support of a famous writer ( James Earl Jones) who has disappeared from sight, and north to Minnesota to talk to what remains of a doctor ( Burt Lancaster) who never got the chance to play with the pros. It is important not to tell too much about the plot. This is the kind of movie Frank Capra might have directed, and James Stewart might have starred in - a movie about dreams. Movies are often so timid these days, so afraid to take flights of the imagination, that there is something grand and brave about a movie where a voice tells a farmer to build a baseball diamond so that Shoeless Joe Jackson can materialize out of the cornfield and hit a few fly balls. If he builds it, the voice seems to promise, Joe Jackson will come and play on it - Shoeless Joe, who was a member of the infamous 1919 Black Sox team but protested until the day he died that he played the best he could.Īs “Field of Dreams” developed this fantasy, I found myself being willingly drawn into it. And when he doesn’t understand the spoken message, Ray is granted a vision of a baseball diamond, right there in his cornfield. Then in 2011, the Lansings sold their property to Go the Distance Baseball, LLC, which still owns the “Field of Dreams Movie Site.” The company plans to build up the site as a premier youth baseball and softball destination while still preserving the idyllic cornfield.It’s a religious picture, all right, but the religion is baseball. In 2007, the Lansings would later buy out the Ameskamps’ portion. After the film, both families kept promoting their sides of the field. Yet, in the end, the baseball field was kept intact.Īccording to a Des Moines Register article, Universal Studios developed the baseball field on the properties of two farm owners - the Lansings and the Ameskamp family - to make the film a famous place. As the film progresses, Ray begins to engage more with these players–among them, actor Burt Lancaster in his final film role–but his farm and personal life begin to suffer. He is beckoned by what he hears - “If you build it, he will come.”Īfter Ray creates this field, ballplayers from the sport's past begin to emerge from the cornfield to play a game. Kinsella’s 1982 novel, “Shoeless Joe.” The film version has Kevin Costner as Iowa-based farmer Ray Kinsella, who is encouraged by a lingering voice to transform part of his family farm’s cornfield into a baseball field. According to IMDB, this Universal Pictures movie, starring Kevin Costner, Ray Liotta, and James Earl Jones, is based on W.P.
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