IS the Natural a sports movie or a movie about life?

Rating: Null/10 (31 January 2001)

Malamud based his book, The Natural, on the Parcival Myth (search for the holy grail). That is why the team is the Knights, the manager is Pops Fisher, and the assistant manager is "red". Note the similarities with the movie, The Fisher King. Same theme, new players and setting. The grail did not work in either case. Being the "best that ever was" is not an answer to what we need in life. Glenn Close was poetic in saying that we have two lives, one that we learn with and one that we live after that. It is interesting that in the Fisher King Jeff Bridges risked his life for a baseball trophy that he thought was the grail. Some real irony that the screenplayers added.
All in all, a great movie, for lots of reasons. Lots of good and evil. Very little violence. It is about all of us.