THE NATURAL
"You got a gift, Roy. But that's not enough. It takes confidence and concentration."
There's this old story told by Jack Kerouac. This young guy goes searching for the meaning of life. He looks high, low, in between. Finally he finds this mountain on the top of which stands a house that serves as home for the Great Wise Man. The young guy crawls up the side of the mountain, the rains come and batter against him, but his question about the meaning of life is a big question and so the young guy simply will not be deterred. He falls against the front door. The Great Wise Man uncrosses his legs and hobbles over to let the young guy in. They chat for a while about this and that and at last the young guy asks the Great Wise Man, "What's it all about, dude, this thing called life?"
The Great Wise Man walks over to the window and stares out at the rain, pondering the moment because, after all, this is a heavy question. At long last, the Great Wise Man turns, smiles and says to the young guy, "You know, there sure are a lot of bastards out there."
Which brings us to The Natural (1984) and the Robert Redford character of Roy Hobbs. Roy has the gift of potentially being the greatest baseball player who ever lived. Unfortunately, there sure are a lot of bastards out there.
Roy comes up against a Babe Ruth slab of an oaf on a train ride to Chicago. During a break on the ride, Joe Don Baker, the oaf in question, accepts a challenge from Roy's manager. The bet? My boy can strike out the Babe with three pitches. He does. The onlooking female (Barbara Hershey) has found her man and in short order shoots him in the stomach with a silver bullet. If you're a star athlete on the way up and you want to get sidetracked for more than a decade, this woman will shoot you with a silver bullet. It's what she does.
Sixteen years later, Roy returns to the game. He's signed a contract with the Judge, a corrupt pseudo-intellectual who just wants to stay out of working night court and who cares nothing for the game. He's betting on Hobbs to be a loser. The Eye Man Bookie (Darren McGavin) tells Hobbs he's a loser and to insure it, he employs Kim Basinger to seduce him into losing his concentration. Roy Hobbs is twice the age of most of the guys playing and more than one of his teammates calls him "Grandpa." When Basinger feeds Roy a poisoned eclair, his stomach lining ruptures and the doctors finally remove the remains of the silver bullet. The doctor tells Roy he will never play baseball again. That news comes at a bad time because his team, The New York Knights, are in the playoffs and they need one more game to clinch it. Wilford Brimley, the manager, would very much like to win the pennant. About the World Series, he could give a shit. But the pennant is something he would truly enjoy winning. If he does, he gets to keep his interest in the team, sell it to some Wrigley Field line painter, and retire to the quiet life of a modern day farmer. We also have to contend with the Glenn Close character, Iris, a true angel if such things exist. She used to be Roy's girl before he left home and found out, to his temporary display, that there sure are a lot of bastards out there. So Roy gets out of his hospital bed in the maternity ward and plays what will be his final game.
You may be tempted to resist the instant charm of this movie because the plot, as I have described it, may feel a bit predictable. If so, I have no sympathy for you. People watch movies they have seen dozens of times over and over again, even though they clearly know how things will work out far in advance, which is one definition of corniness, and yet if those movies were directed by Jean-Luc Godard or Stanley Kubrick, people would insist they were watching them because of the art and skill of the director. But just let poor old Barry Levinson take a shot at art and because the movie is one in which much of what happens can be anticipated, we're supposed to reject it? That, my friends, is a lot of crap. The Natural is not only Levinson's best movie by several light years, it also stands head and shoulders above most other baseball films because the basic plot has almost nothing to do with the excellence of the experience.
One thing that makes it work with the magic of a grand slam on opening day is the beauty of Redford's acting--nobody, certainly not even Kevin Costner, could have embodied the role with more relaxed panache. The other thing is the first rate script by Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry, based on the novel by Barnard Malamud. The theatrically released version of the film has not one wasted frame. You have to catch each instant of the movement because this movie is all about concentration, confidence and talent and if you blink you will miss something that comes back later. Background dialog--noise on the initial train ride--holds meaning here. That combination of perfect acting and complex writing--makes The Natural--superficially as pastoral as the game it celebrates--that most unlikely of genre films: the suspense/thriller.
On a personal level, I happen to agree with the unspoken theme this movie evokes: there certainly are a lot of bastards out there. Most of the time, those villains have some kind of backstory that encourages us to care a bit about them. The Basinger character hints at some of this, but Kim's acting here is so horribly stilted and unerringly manikin-like that we could not possibly care. All but one of the other villains are rotten to the core, their only motivations being their inherent avarice and general contempt for anything decent.
The Barbara Hershey character--the woman who shoots Hobbs early on--is the sole exception. Why has she been gunning down these aspiring stars? Why does she use a silver bullet, an instrument usually reserved for destroying werewolves and vampires? How does the end to which she comes actually transpire? Who the hell is she? Is she pure evil or has she been warped by a succession of abusive relationships? What exactly is her story?
I believe the silver bullet woman represents the great counter-balance to the banality of the main villains. On the one side, we have Eichmann, Goebbels, Himmler and the others. On the other side, we have--what? The collaborators? The isolationists? The profiteers? Perhaps the saboteurs come closest to nailing the comparison.
The mere fact that a movie about baseball could lead to such a question is itself a fine recommendation. Combine that with Redford and the script and you'll be on your feet, screaming for some hot roasted peanuts.
There's this old story told by Jack Kerouac. This young guy goes searching for the meaning of life. He looks high, low, in between. Finally he finds this mountain on the top of which stands a house that serves as home for the Great Wise Man. The young guy crawls up the side of the mountain, the rains come and batter against him, but his question about the meaning of life is a big question and so the young guy simply will not be deterred. He falls against the front door. The Great Wise Man uncrosses his legs and hobbles over to let the young guy in. They chat for a while about this and that and at last the young guy asks the Great Wise Man, "What's it all about, dude, this thing called life?"
The Great Wise Man walks over to the window and stares out at the rain, pondering the moment because, after all, this is a heavy question. At long last, the Great Wise Man turns, smiles and says to the young guy, "You know, there sure are a lot of bastards out there."
Which brings us to The Natural (1984) and the Robert Redford character of Roy Hobbs. Roy has the gift of potentially being the greatest baseball player who ever lived. Unfortunately, there sure are a lot of bastards out there.
Roy comes up against a Babe Ruth slab of an oaf on a train ride to Chicago. During a break on the ride, Joe Don Baker, the oaf in question, accepts a challenge from Roy's manager. The bet? My boy can strike out the Babe with three pitches. He does. The onlooking female (Barbara Hershey) has found her man and in short order shoots him in the stomach with a silver bullet. If you're a star athlete on the way up and you want to get sidetracked for more than a decade, this woman will shoot you with a silver bullet. It's what she does.
Sixteen years later, Roy returns to the game. He's signed a contract with the Judge, a corrupt pseudo-intellectual who just wants to stay out of working night court and who cares nothing for the game. He's betting on Hobbs to be a loser. The Eye Man Bookie (Darren McGavin) tells Hobbs he's a loser and to insure it, he employs Kim Basinger to seduce him into losing his concentration. Roy Hobbs is twice the age of most of the guys playing and more than one of his teammates calls him "Grandpa." When Basinger feeds Roy a poisoned eclair, his stomach lining ruptures and the doctors finally remove the remains of the silver bullet. The doctor tells Roy he will never play baseball again. That news comes at a bad time because his team, The New York Knights, are in the playoffs and they need one more game to clinch it. Wilford Brimley, the manager, would very much like to win the pennant. About the World Series, he could give a shit. But the pennant is something he would truly enjoy winning. If he does, he gets to keep his interest in the team, sell it to some Wrigley Field line painter, and retire to the quiet life of a modern day farmer. We also have to contend with the Glenn Close character, Iris, a true angel if such things exist. She used to be Roy's girl before he left home and found out, to his temporary display, that there sure are a lot of bastards out there. So Roy gets out of his hospital bed in the maternity ward and plays what will be his final game.
You may be tempted to resist the instant charm of this movie because the plot, as I have described it, may feel a bit predictable. If so, I have no sympathy for you. People watch movies they have seen dozens of times over and over again, even though they clearly know how things will work out far in advance, which is one definition of corniness, and yet if those movies were directed by Jean-Luc Godard or Stanley Kubrick, people would insist they were watching them because of the art and skill of the director. But just let poor old Barry Levinson take a shot at art and because the movie is one in which much of what happens can be anticipated, we're supposed to reject it? That, my friends, is a lot of crap. The Natural is not only Levinson's best movie by several light years, it also stands head and shoulders above most other baseball films because the basic plot has almost nothing to do with the excellence of the experience.
One thing that makes it work with the magic of a grand slam on opening day is the beauty of Redford's acting--nobody, certainly not even Kevin Costner, could have embodied the role with more relaxed panache. The other thing is the first rate script by Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry, based on the novel by Barnard Malamud. The theatrically released version of the film has not one wasted frame. You have to catch each instant of the movement because this movie is all about concentration, confidence and talent and if you blink you will miss something that comes back later. Background dialog--noise on the initial train ride--holds meaning here. That combination of perfect acting and complex writing--makes The Natural--superficially as pastoral as the game it celebrates--that most unlikely of genre films: the suspense/thriller.
On a personal level, I happen to agree with the unspoken theme this movie evokes: there certainly are a lot of bastards out there. Most of the time, those villains have some kind of backstory that encourages us to care a bit about them. The Basinger character hints at some of this, but Kim's acting here is so horribly stilted and unerringly manikin-like that we could not possibly care. All but one of the other villains are rotten to the core, their only motivations being their inherent avarice and general contempt for anything decent.
The Barbara Hershey character--the woman who shoots Hobbs early on--is the sole exception. Why has she been gunning down these aspiring stars? Why does she use a silver bullet, an instrument usually reserved for destroying werewolves and vampires? How does the end to which she comes actually transpire? Who the hell is she? Is she pure evil or has she been warped by a succession of abusive relationships? What exactly is her story?
I believe the silver bullet woman represents the great counter-balance to the banality of the main villains. On the one side, we have Eichmann, Goebbels, Himmler and the others. On the other side, we have--what? The collaborators? The isolationists? The profiteers? Perhaps the saboteurs come closest to nailing the comparison.
The mere fact that a movie about baseball could lead to such a question is itself a fine recommendation. Combine that with Redford and the script and you'll be on your feet, screaming for some hot roasted peanuts.
