Field of Dreams
Entry updated 14 September 2026. Tagged: Film.
US movie (1989). Universal/Gordon. Directed by Phil Alden Robinson. Written by Robinson. Based on the novel Shoeless Joe (1982) by W P Kinsella. Cast includes Dwier Brown, Timothy Busfield (Mark), Kevin Costner, Gaby Hoffman, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, Ray Liotta, Amy Madigan (Annie Kinsella) and Frank Whaley. 106 minutes. Colour.
Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella (Costner) fell out of love with father John (Brown) years before the man died. One night in 1989 a Voice says to Ray: "If you build it, he will come." (This is often misquoted as "If you build it, they will come.") The incident recurs, and he believes he is losing his mind; he is furious on discovering daughter Karin (Hoffman) watching Harvey (1950) on television. At last come visions of a Baseball field on his land, and of Shoeless Joe Jackson (Liotta), his father's baseball hero, whose career was terminated by the historical "Black Sox" scandal in 1919. Ray ploughs under much of his corn to carve a proper field. Months later, the ghost of Shoeless Joe indeed appears, first alone then bringing along others from the Chicago Black Sox; they use the field as a practice-ground, though they cannot cross the perimeter of this Pocket Universe.
The Voice speaks to Ray again, saying "Ease his pain", and Ray concludes the sufferer is 1960s guru writer and pacifist Terence Mann (Jones), now an embittered recluse (in the novel the sufferer is identified as J D Salinger, who threatened legal action if his name was used in the film). Mann also hears the voice, which directs them to Chisholm, Minnesota, to contact minor baseball player "Moonlight" Graham (Lancaster), a real person. But they discover Graham is dead. Ray enters a Timeslip, going back seventeen years to 1972, where the still-alive but aged Graham, much-loved doctor and benefactor, explains he thanks God his baseball career was cut so short. Driving back to Iowa (see Time Distortion), they pick up a baseball-mad youth called Archie Graham (Whaley); once they have returned to the "field of dreams" Archie is invited to play with the past stars, who regard the field as Heaven. But Karin has a choking fit and Archie leaves "heaven" to aid her, becoming the elderly Doc Graham and eventually joining the baseball players in the afterlife; Mann, too, is invited there, and resolves his anguish by going. The last shade left on the field is John Kinsella, and father and son rediscover each other through baseball practice.
Shoeless Joe is a novel crafted out of love, probably the best of Kinsella's many baseball stories; Field of Dreams, which respects its source, also shows every sign of having been crafted out of love. Its major theme is the power of belief: belief, it says, can alter Perception; and perception has the power to alter reality, for the better. [JGr/JC]
links
previous versions of this entry