It was April 29, 1989 when a small film destined for eternity was making its debut in the United States. Field of Dreamsthat is to say The man of dreamswas based on a novel by William P. Kinsella entitled Shoeless Joeborn Joe Jackson, a baseball player of the 1910s who along with seven other team mates of the Chicago White Sox was the protagonist of one of the most painful injuries in the history of the United States.
That said, who knows what baseball players could ever have done, if not to sell themselves to the Jewish mafia in Chicago. World Seriesthe finals of the 1919 American championship.
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Apparently a normal sports scandal, but in the social fabric and in the American historical memory it is an indelible stain, about which Francis Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway wrote over the years, up to Philip Roth.
Baseball, the quintessential American pastime, the sport that every father and son play in the front yard, before the eyes of a proud, late afternoon sun-kissed wife and mother, had been betrayed.
Still, Shoeless Joe Jackson boasted the highest batting average in World Series history and professed his innocence. He didn’t serve, he was forever banned from professional baseball.
William Kinsella has always believed in his innocence, which is why in the novel he forces a farmer, Ray Kinsella, to destroy his wheat field to build a diamond on which to play that extraordinary team again and “soothe his pain”. But to do so, he will also have to cross America, kidnap the greatest living writer and have a small town doctor beaten like a professional.
All this happens in the novel and also in the film, directed by Phil Alden Robinson and with the protagonist Kevin Costnerat the time a sex symbol and very much launched, even before the triumph of Dance with wolveswinner of seven Academy Awards.
Despite Costner, and a cast consisting of Amy Madigan, Ray Liotta, James Earl Jones e Burt Lancaster in its latest performance, the film starts quietly at the box office, but over the weeks word of mouth becomes incessant. It will eventually take home $ 64 million as well tre nomination all’Oscarfor Best Picture, Non-original Screenplay and a Magnificent and Evocative Score, by James Horner.
It arrived in Italy on the wave of candidacies, but with a practically invisible distribution by Cecchi Gori. Baseball in our country has always been a mysterious sport and distribution absolutely did not believe in a story that was in fact all American. Apparently. But this is not the case.
Like the baseball field, Ray Kinsella has built his audience over the years as well The man of dreams has become a cult film. Thanks to many things, but above all to the halo of magic and mysticism that surrounds it and to the many messages it sends to the public.
The man of dreams is a film about the family, about the father-son relationship, but it is also, and perhaps above all, a film about guilt and redemption, not only of eight baseball players, but of an entire nation, bleeding and guilty, and that to wash conscience would do anything.
As Terence Mann, the recluse writer whom Ray kidnaps by threatening him with a finger (in the novel, he is JD Salinger, who however did not give permission to use his name for the film, says in the finale):
“Think how many people, Ray. They will come for reasons they cannot even explain. They will take your avenue without understanding why. They will come to your door as innocent as children, filled with nostalgia. ‘Come on, we don’t mind you looking around’ you will tell him. ‘That’s $ 20 per person.’ And they’ll give you the money without a second thought. Because they have money. It is the peace that is lacking. “
James Earl Jones’s voice, James Horner’s music, powerful writing. And the awareness that everyone is missing that peace, for one reason or another.
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In fact, a lot of people came. The man of dreams it has become more than a film, it is a hymn to hope. Every year, in that cornfield that has become a diamond, a game is played to celebrate the film and above all life. What it was. What will be.
And in the end, the only thing that comes to mind is always the same: do you want to play with me?
