Thursday, 12 December 2024

The Natural (1984)

 


The Natural

The last movie on the List from 1984 is “The Natural”, a big and crafty production that I had some problems following and one I would be the wrong person rate.

Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) is (at first) a young farm boy with some skill for the game of baseball. On the way to a “tryout” with a professional team, Hobbs makes himself be noticed and upon arrival in Chicago he is shot by a woman he met on the train.

Fast forward 16 years (to 1939) Hobbs starts playing for the New York Knights. The manager, Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley), is convinced that the unknown player in his mid-thirties is a bad joke, but the team is losing game after game and eventually he gets the chance. Hobbs takes it and proves himself an excellent player (I suppose).

This makes Hobbs a problem for a guy called “The Judge” (Robert Prosky). In a deal with Pop Fisher, he will take over the team if the Knights does not win the tournament (?). The Judge is a dirty guy so he has rigged the game by paying off certain players, so the team keeps losing. Hobbs must be stopped. First the Judge tries to pay off Hobbs. This fails. Then he sends him in the arms of Memo Paris (Kim Basinger). This works much better, Hobbs cannot focus on the game. Then appears childhood friend Iris Gaines (Glenn Close), the spell is broken, and he can play again. As a third resort, Memo poisons Hobbs. This almost works. Only by a heroic effort and risking his life can Hobbs join the final, decisive game.

I know absolutely nothing about baseball. In Denmark, that game is non-existent. The little I recognize is what I have picked up from movies and that only go as far as “try to hit the ball”. The Natural is very much a sports movie and I understand it is trying to celebrate the sport. That means there are entire passages of baseball in the movie, a lot of talk about details of the game and references to a culture around it, all of which are completely alien to me. Anything that relates to the game of baseball I will therefore henceforth refrain to comment upon. Needless to say, “The Natural” was never released in Denmark and I never watched it before.

Fortunately, I do think the game itself is not at the core of the story. I see it as a story about guy with a dream that he never gave up on, even if it looked impossible. It is a story about loving that dream above all else and not be corrupted to betray the dream. Robert Redford’s Roy Hobbs is that down-to-Earth dreamer who wants to chase that dream before it is too late, and he does it with charm and an almost aloof saintliness. If anything, he is too clean, but very, very likable.

It is also a movie about corruption in professional sports. Match fixing, bookmaking scams and dirty transactions in order to make money on other people’s passion. As I understand it, this not a new story and very likely still going on, but placing the story in an age of gangsters and dodgy characters, I suppose we accept it as part of the times.

I tried to find out if this was in any way a real story, but only got as far as this being based on a novel. It seems like a story that could be based on real characters and that would be interesting I suppose, but as it stands it is a fable about the above themes, and it works fine as that. I do not find the story particularly revolutionary, but it is nice to watch a movie with a guy you can really root for and see him come through in the end. Maybe a bit predictable, but nice.

There are a lot of famous actors here, such as Robert Duvall and news reporter Max Mercy, and even a very early part for Michael Madsen You can tell this is a big production and I sense a lot of production quality here. My guess is that this ranks high for fans of baseball. For me, it was merely a decent movie featuring a sport I do not understand.

     


2 comments:

  1. Being someone who grew up on baseball, this film for me is essential as it's one of my all-time sports films. I'm sorry it didn't work for you.

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    1. I do think I got more out of it than I expected, but being alien to baseball, this was almost a lost cause. I can imagine this working well for baseball fans.

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