Field of Dreams (1989)

I blame Kevin Costner. He's starting to get on my nerves, especially after watching him in JFK and Dances with Wolves and now Field of Dreams, a nominee for Best Picture of 1989. The Academy must have been quite enamored with him to keep nominating his movies for the top award (and crazed to have given him the Oscar for making Dances with Wolves) during the late 1980s and early 1990s. I'm sure this film was picked as one of the nominees for 1989 because of the alleged "spiritual" message that it contains or maybe for the notion of maintaining some spark of individuality that it supports, but I just found it to be pure hokum.

Costner plays Ray Kinsella, a farmer who isn't very successful. We start the movie with his voice-over about his father's life and then Ray's life until we get to the moment when The Voice speaks to him in a cornfield, telling him, "If you build it, he will come." The Voice, of course, is open to interpretation, and many have imagined it to be the voice of God speaking to Ray. I suspect he's just delusional or schizophrenic, but that wouldn't make for a very happy movie or ending now, would it? There are moments where the film seems to support my assertion, though, particularly by having Patsy Cline's "Crazy" playing at the feed supply store while Ray tries to explain what he's heard to some of the other farmers. And later there's a scene from the movie Harvey, a far superior film in so many ways, playing in the background too. Yes, I know we're supposed to dismiss those as red herrings. I just don't.

Ray's wife Annie (played with gusto by Amy Madigan, who should have had a more successful movie career than she did) supports him in plowing up a portion of their cornfield to make a baseball diamond. You see, Ray had a vision that it was a baseball field he was to build, something involving Shoeless Joe Jackson and the infamous Chicago Black Sox scandal of 1919. The loss of that much corn means that their savings are gone and the Kinsellas might not even break even that year. Yet they persist in this folly, especially after Ray Liotta's Shoeless Joe walks out of the cornfield one day and plays some baseball with Ray. Soon other members of the team appear to play, but the only people who can see them are members of Ray's immediate family: himself, his wife, and his little daughter. Get it? Only those who truly believe... yeah, I know.

When The Voice says to Ray, "Ease his pain" one night at the oddest and loudest and best-attended PTA meeting ever--over the subject of banning books, of all things--Ray decides to seek out author Terence Mann (played by the great James Earl Jones)at his home in Boston. Ray, a fan of the author's work, seems to think that he needs to take Mann to a baseball game and talk to him because Mann might be able to explain what's going on. Mann has become a bit of a recluse over the years, and even a ballgame can't make him into less of a curmudgeon. When both Terence and Ray hear The Voice say, "Go the distance," they naturally assume it's about Moonlight Graham in Minnesota and go in search of this guy who played only one inning of major league baseball.

If this is all sounding a bit preposterous to you--and you haven't already seen the movie--you'd be on the right track, in my opinion. The leaps of faith it takes to accept some of the scenarios here are, frankly, far too great for a person of logic and reason to make. I know we suspend disbelief sometimes when we go to a movie, but you'd think the plot would at least attempt to cover over some of the gaping holes in the narrative in order to ease our disbelief a bit.

Nevertheless, while Ray's farm is being sold to his brother-in-law (played by Timothy Busfield of TV's thirtysomething), Ray goes back in time (yeah, I know how that sounds, but it's in the movie) to hear Doc Graham (played with great style by Burt Lancaster) talk about his time in the big leagues. They later pick up a young hitchhiking Archie Graham and take him to the field. By now, there are enough players to form teams and have real games. Ray's daughter claims people will show up and buy tickets, and it seems everyone agrees that it will be a return to simpler times. Typical reactionary response, isn't it? We just need to go back to the way things used to be. The past is always better than the present, isn't it? Nonsense.

The movie gets even crazier at this point. Shoeless Joe tells young Archie Graham that he was a good player. The players invite Terence to join them when they walk back into the cornfield. I suppose it's meant to be heaven? An Iowa cornfield doesn't strike me as all that heavenly, but we're supposed to go along with it for the movie's sake. And then Ray's dad shows up. Dwier Brown is the actor who plays John Kinsella, and he has perhaps the most thankless job in the movie. He gets to play catch with Costner's Ray so that the two men can reconnect with each other. Let's overlook the fact that Ray's father has been dead for so long that he probably would freak out if some grown man tried to pass himself off as Ray. We have to overlook it or else the film doesn't make sense. Well, that is, if you think it's made any sense so far anyway.

I know people will criticize me and say that I don't get it. This is a movie about second chances and reliving your youth and getting to have those moments again that you wished you could have. It's about reuniting with the most elemental parts of your existence, such as your relationship (if you're a man, it seems) with your father. The truth is I do get all that. I really do. I still think it's a pretty stupid movie, requiring me to forgive an awful lot of stuff that shouldn't be forgiven, frankly.

And that's where I blame Costner. He has to carry this movie and make this outlandish scenario believable, but he just isn't up to the task. He always looks like he's just had his foot stepped on. There's a pained expression on his face throughout much of the film, as if he himself is finding all of this a bit tough to believe. I'll be the first to admit that he looks pretty good in a pair of tight jeans, and the film's makers manage to incorporate a scene of him in boxer shorts just for purposes of titillation, I guess. But I'm still a bit bewildered by how he became such a big star. He's not a strong enough actor to convince us (well, me, anyway) to buy the plot of Field of Dreams. And if you still want to think that I just don't get it, well, then just wait for The Voice to tell you what to do to turn me around.

I should mention that people still show up, almost twenty years after this film's initial release, looking for the baseball diamond in the cornfield. I guess that's a testament to the power of film, that a movie could still be so memorable to encourage people to look for inspiration in such a place. Instead, though, I think it's sad. A Hollywood shooting location isn't the site of the Second Coming, and it's too bad that people have such a void in their lives that they will seek out what's left of the set from Field of Dreams (or the image of Jesus in a tortilla or whatever) as a sign of a reason to maintain their faith.

Oscar Nominations: Picture, Adapted Screenplay, and Original Score

Lilies of the Field (1963)

Lilies of the Field, nominated for Best Picture of 1963, is a relatively slight film, to be honest. The story is simple. A drifter named Homer Smith (Sidney Poitier) needs water for his car and winds up at a remote farm in the desert. The farm happens to be run by a group of Eastern European nuns, most of whom barely speak English, yet they somehow manage to convince and/or trick Homer into completing a chapel for them. Nothing more complicated than that happens, but Lilies of the Field is nevertheless a charming little movie, primarily thanks to the charisma of its star (who would win an Oscar for Best Actor) and his interaction with the nuns, particularly Mother Maria (played by the indomitable Lilia Skala).

The nuns have all come from countries like Germany, Austria, and Hungary. They are, in a sense, refugees from East Berlin, having escaped over the wall after World War II. They are, certainly, completely out of place in the harsh environment of the desert. So far, they have been unsuccessful at finding someone to build the chapel that they think will unite the small Catholic community of the area. As it is, there's an Irish Catholic priest who visits each week to hold services in the dusty area in front of a general store and a few parishioners who show up for the weekly mass.

When Homer shows up, these nuns (Mother Maria, in particular) think he must have been sent by God to help them. He agrees to work only if he's paid for what he does. Homer, it seems, only wants to get enough money to move on to the next town. He fixes their roof and starts driving them to services each week. They feed him a spartan diet; one of the funniest scenes involves Poitier eating in one bite the entire breakfast that has been prepared for him. In fact, there's a lot of gentle humor throughout the movie. The most fun, of course, involves him trying to teach them English. They've been listening to records to learn this new language, and he has more than a few laughs at how oddly they phrase sentences.

There are, naturally, obstacles along the way. Everyone, including the priest who visits each week, thinks the nuns are in over their heads, and Homer is told repeatedly that the best thing for him to do is move on. Instead, he feels enormous sympathy for them, so he gets a job working two days a week for a local construction firm in order to stick around. One of the movie's very few instances of calling attention to Poitier's race happens when he asks for the job. The owner calls him "boy," only to have Homer call him "boy" right back. Otherwise, I suppose we're meant to see that the nuns treat Homer as an equal regardless of his skin color and that there can be relative harmony between people of such disparate backgrounds.

The film includes images of numerous groups of Mexican immigrants as well, including those who attend the weekly services and those who show up initially to watch Homer work and then take over the actual details of the construction. When Homer is called a "gringo" by these workers, he claims he doesn't know if that's a step up or down. To represent the diversity of the desert Southwest, the poor and disenfranchised of the area would logically need to be a part of this movie, and the filmmakers don't disappoint.

To be honest, I think my description of what happens makes Lilies of the Field seem more racially charged than it really is. This is a subtle film in many ways, but you always know where its heart lies. I know it sounds like a revolutionary picture by having a black man be the "savior" for the Europeans who have struggled before his arrival. However, this film is really about unity in the grand liberal film making tradition. Everyone needs to pitch in to build this chapel because, well, we all have to live together. Of course, that makes this movie sound even more ham-fisted than it really is too. It walks a rather delicate line, actually, and is perhaps as successful as it is because of that light touch.

Aside from the performances by Poitier, who is very sympathetic and realistic in his portrayal of a man who has often been caught in difficult circumstances, and Skala, who is great as the toughest, most single-minded nun ever abandoned in the desert, I'm not sure that there's much else here to recommend this film, particularly as a Best Picture nominee. It's a testament, I guess, to how far we've come that this movie's plot seems so outdated in many ways. We've seen stories like this so many times, and I'm not really certain that it wasn't already a cliche when it was released in 1963.

The Academy made some odd picks for that year. I've already discussed How the West Was Won, a personal favorite of mine but no one's idea of a great movie. I've also written about the winner, Tom Jones, an overrated movie without a lot to recommend it these days. I've seen the Taylor-Burton Cleopatra in the past, but frankly, I'm not looking forward to enduring that monstrosity again. So we're left with America, America, a movie I've never seen nor heard much about, as the only possible choice left for the award. If you needed a year to begin questioning the judgment of the Academy members--and if you haven't already, you should--1963, the year of my birth, just might be a good place to start.

Oscar Win: Actor (Poitier)

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Supporting Actress (Skala), Adapted Screenplay, and Cinematography (Black and White)