Good Film: The Natural Plays A Golf Course

Rating: 7/10 (4 November 2000)

My, my, what nerves have been touched, judging by the comments.
This is a good film, and I appreciate anybody who makes a film about golf. It's lush, beautifully photographed, and well-acted, particularly by the second-tier actors. However, I am always a bit cautious about watching Hollywood do mysticism in sports. It's a bit like reading user comments by people who don't play golf. It's a bit like watching Hollywood do the American South.
Bagger Vance is similar to many of the characters you can read about in true-life accounts of mysticsm. If you live long enough and welcome it, you will probably have an experience similar to Matt Damon's character. A strange person enters your life, doesn't seem quite human, seems to have direct knowledge of events and conditions most of us don't, and after helping, he leaves. It isn't so unusual. My guess is, it happens more often than we know. Somebody once went to Boris Pasternak and criticized Dr. Zhivago for having too many amazing events, to many coincidences. Too many people who hadn't met in years just bumping into each other. Pasternak replied in so many words, if you don't believe in that, it's because you don't know Russia. That's how things are there. You expect them to happen because they're commonplace.So, the Will Smith character is completely reasonable, and the performance properly underplayed. Zen master/yogis generally don't get too excited or loud.
There were some nice moments in the editing and sound. In our theater, at least, the movie opens in silence. The Fox logo comes up, and you expect the trumpets, but it's all quiet until we see Jack Lemmon playing golf. The very climax of the golfing also happens in silence. If I had to read anything mystical in that, it might be that our greatest achievement might be to reach the level of the Absolute, which is silence. By the way, I got the impression that Bagger Vance maybe saves the life of the Jack Lemmon character. It's subtle, but it is suggested.
This is the kind of film you really want to see in a movie theater. It will lose a lot when it shrinks to the VCR and DVD. I forget the name of the course they shot it on, but the course itself is one of the charcters.

It will be a while before we know if anything spoken in the film drops into our day-to-day usage. Nobody says, "Be the ball", but the movie does have some good moments. For people who don't play sports, a lot of what Bagger Vance says makes no sense, such as when he says Matt Damon needs to see the field clearly. WHAT? Well, there was a book or article written maybe 20 years ago by George Leonard, in which he discusses how the great basketball players have "soft eyes", a vision which pulls in much more than the average player can see. It's inherent in us, but rarely developed.

Anyway, this is a good film, but one that challenges the viewer. If you don't believe in things you don't believe in, it's like watching fog. If you have had experiences in athletics or meditating, much of it will make sense.