Field of Dreams: An Amazing Sports Movie

Field Of Dreams is one of the best sports movies ever made. It's a magical tale of family, faith, and the purity of our national pastime: baseball. With a beautiful American landscape and a complex back-story, Field of Dreams connects a love of the game of baseball to the relationship between father and son and the importance of faith in things we can't always initially understand.

Field of Dreams follows Ray Kinsella, a farmer by chance who lives in Iowa with his wife and young daughter. Ray's troubled relationship with his deceased father leads him on a path, guided by a mysterious voice, to plow down a large portion of his cornfield and build a baseball field. Much to his (and his family's) surprise, players begin to appear from the surrounding cornfield. Players Ray recognizes as the disgraced (and dead) 1919 White Sox. The mysterious voice then leads Ray on a journey to meet many people that all bring him to peace with his troubled relationships. In the end, Field of Dreams is a story of family, faith, and the beauty of the game of baseball.

Kevin Costner plays a troubled, passionate, and conflicted Ray Kinsella. Throughout Kevin Costner's body of work he has done quite a few baseball movies, but Field of Dreams remains one of the most complex roles he has taken on. His family is portrayed by Amy Madigan as his wife and Gabby Hoffmann as his young daughter. Both mold into their roles in the most believable manner. A young Ray Liotta plays a haunting, troubled Shoeless Joe Jackson and James Earl Jones brings to life Terence Mann, a writer who has gone into seclusion only to be inspired once again by Ray and his field. Burt Lancaster makes a brief but inspiring appearance as the elder Dr. Graham who briefly gets to live his dream of a major league at bat, but must also give it up yet again.

Field of Dreams is one of those movies that you can watch again and again because of the inspirational messages. After watching, you feel faith restored in the ability to make amends, the importance of faith even when you don't understand, and the beauty of baseball.

As a native Iowan, the movie also reminds me of the beauty of the Midwest and this state in particular. Unlike many movies that come out of Hollywood, this movie does not make all Midwesterners or farmers look like simpletons or fools. It portrays them as real people with real problems and real complexity.

The movie's basis is baseball and the sport of baseball, but one of the things so intrinsic to baseball is the father-son relationship. Son wanting dad to play catch. As Ray goes on his journey, he has to confront the conflicted relationship he had with his father and he has to realize and accept that he used baseball as a weapon against his father. From refusing to play catch, to calling his father's hero (Shoeless Joe Jackson) a cheat, Ray hurt his father through his love of the game. In the end, Ray relives his love of the game and feels he makes amends with his father through this and having his one last "catch" with his young father on Ray's field of dreams.

Faith and inspiration are integral to the story, all with baseball as the background. Ray for reasons he can't quite understand, follows the strange voice he hears despite the financial problem that it causes and the friction it causes with his in-laws. He doesn't know why, but his faith in the voice leads him to understand his relationship with his father and be able to make amends with his deceased father, making him a better husband and father in the process. Terrance Mann has become cynical with the world after having been a famous writer in the sixties. He is bitter and angry when Ray first finds him, but Ray's story and Ray's field inspire Mann to feel like he can write once again and feel something again. Archie Graham's story shows us that sometimes a dream deferred was never meant to be and sometimes that's okay. He is an inspiration as we see him step across the lines of the field to save Ray's daughter-giving up his dream in the process. In the end, Archie is okay with his decision because he realizes being a doctor was his true destiny.

As a baseball fan, today's steroid era can easily make you cynical about the game and its players. However, Terrance Mann's speech about the longevity and historical significance of baseball, the eagerness of the young Archie Graham as he embarks on his dream, and the sad acceptance of the older Graham discussing his love of the game, reminds us as fans and lovers of baseball that despite the stains that some bring against the game, at its heart it is still a game that has withstood the test of time, a game that attracts amazing stories, and a game that we continue to love for its simplicity, complexity, history, and amazing achievements.

In the end, Field of Dreams isn't just a sports movie, but the heart of baseball is at the core of all the many messages it imparts, making it one of the best sports movies of all time.