“If you build it, he will come.”
“Field of Dreams” is one of those movies that 1) never fails to make me cry at the end and 2) I have to stop and watch if it is on TV. It’s that good.
Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), his wife Annie (Amy Madigan) and daughter Karin live on a farm in Iowa. We learn through the opening montage that Ray grew up mostly with his father (his mother passed away when he was young), his father was a die hard White Sox fan and that he met Annie in college, they married and bought a farm in Iowa (they knew nothing about farming). You also learn that Ray had a falling out with his father and they never spoke again before he died. They’re self-proclaimed hippies and the chemistry between Costner and Madigan is wonderful on screen—you truly believe they’re in love.
One afternoon, while working out in the corn field, Ray hears a voice whisper to him “If you build it, he will come.” At first he thinks it’s a joke, but then he’s given a vision of a baseball field and a young man he instantly recognizes as “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, a famous White Sox player that was kicked out of baseball following the “Black Sox” scandal of 1918 (Joe Jackson, along with 7 other players were accused of accepting money and throwing games—while the accusations were never proved or disproved, all of the men ended up signing confessions and were never allowed to play professional ball again). Ray thinks he’s going crazy, but he can’t ignore the voice or the feeling that if he builds a baseball field in the middle of his corn that somehow Shoeless Joe will come back to life. Annie doesn’t know what to think, but she loves her husband and supports him. She tells him, after some teasing, that if he needs to do it, then he should.
So, despite the disapproving looks of the townsfolk and the whispers behind his back, Ray cuts under a huge section of corn to build his field. What happens over the course of the rest of the movie is pure magic. Based on the novel “Shoeless Joe” by W.P. Kinsella (which is a must read if you love the movie), the writing is spectacular, the music is perfect and there isn’t one bad thing I could say about this movie. James Earl Jones is wonderful as an old writer who’s lost his inspiration and is drawn into Ray’s world (courtesy of the “the Voice”) only to discover that magic still exists. The speech he gives at the end never fails to give me goosebumps.
If you haven’t seen “Field of Dreams”, rent or buy it today, and be sure to sit down with a box of tissues. There is some momentary language, but it is definitely a movie the whole family can, and should watch together. Don’t be surprised if your husband sheds a few tears too.
Rated PG
Starring: Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, Timothy Busfield, Ray Liotta, Burt Lancaster