Director Barry Levinson treats The Natural as a kind of shrine to America's national pastime, baseball, complete with all the possible mythic resonance that can be gleaned from the subject. Fans of the Bernard Malamud novel may be dismayed, but anyone who fell for the similarly mythic Field of Dreams will be hooked. Levinson displays an unabashed devotion to the game, although the film could use more of the realities of chewing tobacco and pine tar. The story opens as a young man (Robert Redford, in soft lighting) emerges from the sun-dappled heartland as maybe the best baseball player anybody's ever seen. On his way to the majors, he is waylaid by an enigmatic black widow (Barbara Hershey) and vanishes for many years. When he re-emerges, a silent mystery, he lands a spot with a New York team and begins tearing up the league--he's still the natural. Redford is fine, and Kim Basinger and Oscar-nominated Glenn Close are effective as the women in his life. The crowning touch is the soaring, extraordinary music by Randy Newman, the singer-songwriter turned orchestral composer. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0
The Art of Feel Good A true masterpiece of simplicity. Like the paper-clip, a Jackson Pollock or the unfortunate 9/11 attacks. Their ridiculous simplicity is what elates and devastates with such extra vigour. The more base the premise, the harder the impact. Any complexity would be to confuse what is essentially happening here, the unearthing of an oft hidden raw human emotion. An emotion far to complex to convey in words but as rewarding as watching this great cast act out this simple story.
If you ever forget what it is... more info
coulda been a contender... I'm a film fan. Someone who watches a lot of films. But I used to play a lot of sport...and wasn't too bad at some of them. You don't have to be like me to enjoy this film...(which was hugely)...but it might help if somewhere along the lines you thought..."what if...?" For the intellect there is a raft of mythological/historical references...the lightning struck tree...Thor=God of Thunder and the hammer...a mighty strike... One critic has even pronounced on the fact that Roy is phonetical close to... more info
Circular cricket... I approach reviewing the movie 'The Natural' with some fear and trembling -- not being someone raised on American sports, baseball has often held the image in my mind as being a sort of circular cricket game. However, beyond the basic mechanics of the game is the psychology, and, by and large, there is a very different mindset to athletics in America than there is outside of America (though this is changing over time); certainly as I was growing up, I had no sports-figure heroes, nor did I ever consider... more info
A tale well-told "The Natural" is a another example of fine story-telling brought to the big screen. Like "Field of Dreams" this film is fine story-telling from beginning to end. Actually, while "Field of Dreams" comes closest to it, "The Natural" has a feel uniquely its own. It has an ethereal, dream-like feel to it and, for anyone who has seen this movie even just once, I would bet that they would recognize it from a ten-second clip taken from any part of the movie. Robert Redford is not my favorite actor; I don't dislike... more info
![The Natural [1984]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Z8GTXF6ZL._SL160_.jpg)
