Field of Dreams 1989, All You Want To Know & Watch Movie
Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella is inspired by a voice he can’t ignore to pursue a dream he can hardly believe. Supported by his wife, Ray begins the quest by turning his ordinary cornfield into a place where dreams can come true.
Field of Dreams is a 1989 American sports fantasy drama film written and directed by Phil Alden Robinson, based on Canadian novelist W. P. Kinsella’s 1982 novel Shoeless Joe. The film stars Kevin Costner as a farmer who builds a baseball field in his cornfield that attracts the ghosts of baseball legends, including Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) and the Chicago Black Sox. Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, and Burt Lancaster (in his final film role) also star.
The film was released on May 5, 1989. It received generally positive reviews from critics, and was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Original Score and Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2017, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Field of Dreams Trailer
Field of Dreams Reviews
Up until the farmer starts hearing voices, “Field of Dreams” is a completely sensible film about a young couple who want to run a family farm in Iowa. Ray and Annie Kinsella (Kevin Costner and Amy Madigan) have tested the fast track and had enough of it, and they enjoy sitting on the porch and listening to the grass grow. When the voice speaks for the first time, the farmer is baffled, and so was I: Could this be one of those religious pictures where a voice tells the humble farmer where to build the cathedral?
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.
As “Field of Dreams” developed this fantasy, I found myself being willingly drawn into it. 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. This is the kind of movie Frank Capra might have directed, and James Stewart might have starred in — a movie about dreams.
It is important not to tell too much about the plot. (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.
The movie sensibly never tries to make the slightest explanation for the strange events that happen after the diamond is constructed.
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). But there is not a corny, stupid payoff at the end. Instead, the movie depends on a poetic vision to make its point.
The director, Phil Alden Robinson, and the writer, W. P. Kinsella, are dealing with stuff that’s close to the heart (it can’t be a coincidence that the author and the hero have the same last name).
There is a speech in this movie about baseball that is so simple and true that it is heartbreaking. And the whole attitude toward the players reflects that attitude. Why do they come back from the great beyond and play in this cornfield? Not to make any kind of vast, earthshattering statement, but simply to hit a few and field a few, and remind us of a good and innocent time.
It is very tricky to act in a movie like this; there is always the danger of seeming ridiculous. Costner and Madigan create such a grounded, believable married couple that one of the themes of the movie is the way love means sharing your loved one’s dreams. Jones and Lancaster create small, sharp character portraits – two older men who have taken the paths life offered them, but never forgotten what baseball represented to them in their youth.
“Field of Dreams” will not appeal to grinches and grouches and realists. It is a delicate movie, a fragile construction of one goofy fantasy after another. But it has the courage to be about exactly what it promises. “If you build it, he will come.” And he does. In a baseball movie named “The Natural,” the hero seemed almost messianic.
“Field of Dreams” has a more modest aim. The ghost of Shoeless Joe does not come back to save the world. He simply wants to answer that wounded cry that has become a baseball legend: “Say it ain’t so, Joe!” And the answer is, it ain’t.
Field of Dreams Credits
Field of Dreams (1989)
107 minutes
Cast
Burt Lancaster as Dr. Graham
Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella
Gaby Hoffman as Karin Kinsella
Timothy Busfield as Mark
Amy Madigan as Annie Kinsella
Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe Jackson
James Earl Jones as Terence Mann
Photographed by
- John Lindley
Written and Directed by
- Phil Alden Robinson
Produced by
- Charles Gordon
- Lawrence Gordon
Music by
- James Horner
Edited by
- Ian Crafford
Field of Dreams Plot
Ray Kinsella lives with his wife, Annie, and daughter, Karin, on their corn farm in Dyersville, Iowa. Troubled by his broken relationship with his late father, John, a devoted baseball fan, Ray fears growing old without achieving anything.
While walking through his cornfield one evening, he hears a voice whispering, “If you build it, he will come.” He sees a vision of a baseball diamond in the cornfield and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson (who in real-life died in 1951) standing in the middle. Believing in him, Annie lets him plow under part of their corn crop to build a baseball field, at risk of financial hardship.
As Ray builds the field, he tells Karin about the 1919 Black Sox Scandal. Several months pass, and just as Ray is beginning to doubt himself, Shoeless Joe reappears, asking if others can play, and returns with the seven other Black Sox players. Annie’s brother, Mark, can’t see the players. He warns the couple they are going bankrupt and offers to buy their land. The voice, meanwhile, urges Ray to “ease his pain.”
Ray and Annie attend a PTA meeting, where she argues against someone who is trying to ban books by Terence Mann, a controversial author and activist from the 1960s. Ray deduces the voice was referring to Mann, who had named one of his characters “John Kinsella” and had once professed a childhood dream of playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. When Ray and Annie have identical dreams about Ray and Mann attending a game at Fenway Park, Ray finds Mann in Boston.
Mann, who has become a disenchanted recluse, agrees to attend one game. There Ray hears the voice urging him to “go the distance”, seeing statistics on the scoreboard for Archie “Moonlight” Graham, who played in one game for the New York Giants in 1922 but never got to bat. Mann also admits to hearing the voice and seeing the scoreboard.
They drive to Minnesota, learning that Graham, who was a physician, had died years earlier. Ray researches Graham, whose obituary said he was a beloved and charitable doctor, but makes no mention of his baseball career. Ray suddenly finds himself in 1972, meeting an elderly Graham, who feels his calling in life was medicine, not sports. During the drive back to Iowa, Ray picks up young hitchhiker Archie Graham, who is looking for a baseball team to join.
Ray later tells Mann that his father dreamed of being a baseball player then tried to make him pick up the sport instead. At 14, after reading one of Mann’s books, Ray stopped playing catch with his father, and they became estranged after he mocked John for having “a hero who was a criminal.” Ray admits that his greatest regret is that his father died before they could reconcile. Arriving at the farm, they see various all-star players have arrived, fielding a second team. A game is played and Graham finally gets his turn at bat.
The next morning, Mark returns, demanding that Ray sell the farm or the bank will foreclose on him. Karin insists that people will pay to watch the ballgames. Mann agrees, saying that “people will come” to relive their childhood innocence. Ray and Mark scuffle, accidentally knocking Karin off the bleachers. Graham — despite knowing he will be unable to return after stepping off the field — saves her.
Having become old Doc Graham again, he reassures Ray that he has no regrets. As he heads back toward the cornfield, he is commended by the other players, and before he can disappear into the corn, Shoeless Joe calls out, “Hey, rookie!” Graham stops and turns to Shoeless Joe, who deliberately tells him, “You were good.” Doc Graham’s eyes shine with tears before he smiles, turns back toward the corn, and disappears into it. Suddenly, Mark too can see the players and urges Ray to keep the farm.
Shoeless Joe invites Mann to enter the corn, and Mann disappears into it. Ray is angry at not being invited but Joe rebukes him, glancing towards the catcher at home plate, saying, “If you build it, he will come.” When the catcher removes his mask, Ray recognizes him as his father as a young man. Ray realizes “ease his pain” referred to his own regrets.
Ray introduces John to his wife and daughter, initially without referring to him as his father. As John begins to head towards the cornfield, Ray, calling him “Dad”, asks if he wants to have a catch. John gladly accepts as hundreds of cars are seen approaching the field, fulfilling the prophecy that people will come to watch baseball.
Field of Dreams Box office
Field of Dreams Critical Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 88% based on 65 reviews, with an average rating of 8.00/10. The website’s critics consensus reads: “Field of Dreams is sentimental, but in the best way; it’s a mix of fairy tale, baseball, and family togetherness.”[16] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating “mixed or average reviews”.[17] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “A” on scale of A+ to F.[18]
Roger Ebert awarded the film a perfect four stars, admiring its ambition: “This is the kind of movie Frank Capra might have directed, and James Stewart might have starred in—a movie about dreams.”[19] Caryn James of The New York Times wrote: “A work so smartly written, so beautifully filmed, so perfectly acted, that it does the almost impossible trick of turning sentimentality into true emotion.”[20] Duane Byrge of The Hollywood Reporter praised Costner for his performance, writing that it was his “eye-on-the-ball exuberance that carries Dreams past its often mechanical aesthetic paces.”[21]
Variety magazine gave the film a mixed review: “In spite of a script hobbled with cloying aphorisms and shameless sentimentality, Field of Dreams sustains a dreamy mood in which the idea of baseball is distilled to its purest essence.”[22]
Peter Travers at Rolling Stone magazine panned the film and wrote: “To be honest, I started hearing things, too. Just when Jones was delivering an inexcusably sappy speech about baseball being “a symbol of all that was once good in America,” I heard the words “If he keeps talking, I’m walking.””[23]
Field of Dreams Accolades
The film was nominated for three Academy Awards in 1990: Best Picture (Gordon & Gordon), Best Adapted Screenplay (Robinson), and Best Original Score (Horner).[24] It did not win in any category.
| Award | Category | Nominee(s) | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20/20 Awards | Best Adapted Screenplay | Phil Alden Robinson | Nominated |
| Academy Awards[24] | Best Picture | Lawrence Gordon and Charles Gordon | Nominated |
| Best Screenplay – Based on Material from Another Medium | Phil Alden Robinson | Nominated | |
| Best Original Score | James Horner | Nominated | |
| American Cinema Editors Awards | Best Edited Feature Film | Ian Crafford | Nominated |
| Artios Awards[25] | Outstanding Achievement in Feature Film Casting – Drama | Margery Simkin | Nominated |
| Blue Ribbon Awards | Best Foreign Film | Phil Alden Robinson | Won |
| Chicago Film Critics Association Awards[26] | Best Supporting Actress | Amy Madigan | Nominated |
| Directors Guild of America Awards[27] | Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures | Phil Alden Robinson | Nominated |
| Grammy Awards[28] | Best Album of Original Instrumental Background Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television | James Horner | Nominated |
| Hochi Film Awards | Best Foreign Language Film | Phil Alden Robinson | Won |
| Hugo Awards[29] | Best Dramatic Presentation | Phil Alden Robinson (director/screenplay); W.P. Kinsella (novel) |
Nominated |
| Japan Academy Film Prize | Outstanding Foreign Language Film | Won | |
| Kinema Junpo Awards | Best Foreign Language Film | Phil Alden Robinson | Won |
| National Board of Review Awards[30] | Top Ten Films | 10th Place | |
| National Film Preservation Board[31] | National Film Registry | Inducted | |
| Saturn Awards[32] | Best Fantasy Film | Nominated | |
| Best Writing | Phil Alden Robinson | Nominated | |
| Writers Guild of America Awards[33] | Best Screenplay – Based on Material from Another Medium | Nominated | |
| Young Artist Awards[34] | Best Young Actress Supporting Role in a Motion Picture | Gaby Hoffmann | Won |
Field of Dreams Pictures
Field of Dreams Movie Info
When Iowa farmer Ray (Kevin Costner) hears a mysterious voice one night in his cornfield saying “If you build it, he will come,” he feels the need to act. Despite taunts of lunacy, Ray builds a baseball diamond on his land, supported by his wife, Annie (Amy Madigan). Afterward, the ghosts of great players start emerging from the crops to play ball, led by “Shoeless” Joe Jackson. But, as Ray learns, this field of dreams is about much more than bringing former baseball greats out to play.
- Rating: PG
- Genre: Fantasy
- Original Language: English
- Director: Phil Alden Robinson
- Producer: Charles Gordon, Lawrence Gordon
- Writer: Phil Alden Robinson
- Release Date (Theaters): Original
- Release Date (Streaming):
- Box Office (Gross USA): $61.8M
- Runtime:
- Distributor: Universal Pictures
- Production Co: Gordon Company
- Sound Mix: Surround
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Author: Mohammed A Bazzoun
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