Wonderboy

Rating: 9/10 (18 June 2016)

After winning a Best Director Oscar in 1981. Robert Redford semi retired from acting. Setting up The Sundance Institute and raising funds for his personal directing projects left him with little appetite for acting work.
The Natural is an almost Arthurian story based on Bernard Malamud's book was Redford's return to acting for the first time in four years.
Set in the 1920s Redford plays Roy Hobbs a naturally gifted baseball player who fashioned his bat from a tree that was struck by lightning on the night his father died. The bat is his Excalibur.
On his way to Chicago for tryouts he is gunned down by a black widow like maniac who is killing the best in every sport. Sixteen years later Hobbs emerges as a rookie for the New York Knights a team that is going nowhere and whose shady owner wants the team to fail.
Once Hobbs get the chance to play he becomes a natural hitter leading his team on a winning streak. His success brings hazards and again there is another woman out to derail him, bring him down and therefore the team.
The Natural is a period drama beautifully photographed by Caleb Deschanel. It moves at a languid place accompanied by a memorable score from Randy Newman. The music and some of the baseball imagery has been much imitated since.
It is a lyrical film about second chances, love and redemption. It is also about good and evil. The women represented by Barbara Hershey and Kim Basinger are evil city women wanting Hobbs downfall.
Glenn Close who plays his old flame back at the farm is draped in white and is almost angelic giving Hobbs a lift whenever she turn up at the stadium.
The film bristles with a great supporting cast. Joe Don Baker as The Whammer who is humiliated by the younger Hobbs. Robert Duvall who has never played ball but is on the lookout for a great story and believes he can make or break a player to protect the sport such is his cynicism.
Darren McGavin is a shadowy gambler who is in league with Robert Prosky's Judge who wants the team to fail so he can get sole ownership from the coach played Wilfred Brimley. These are arrogant and corrupted men.
Brimley and Richard Farnsworth are the pure heart of the sport, uncorrupted men who love the game.
I first watched this film over 30 years ago and found it enchanting, a thoughtful film for all the family.
This was director's Barry Levinson's introduction to the major league. A chance to work with a big star and bigger budget. I think Levinson feels a bit lost away from his personal Baltimore set films and this could be the reason why some find the film cheesy and the portrayal of women shallow.
I think the decision to shoot Redford and Close as teenagers in dim light is a risky move that they just about get away with. However when we see the older Hobbs we see Redford in his element. Like Hobbs in the intervening sixteen years, Redford keeps him mysterious, somehow distant which is typical of the actor who eschewed the method acting of displaying histrionics on screen. You leave that to others and just bounce of them.