The Natural is a story of myth. Perhaps there really is no better sport in all of history that works more around the notion of the myth than baseball. The 1984 Barry Levinson directed film The Natural, takes this to the absolute extreme, reaping not only immense chills on every watch, but also perfectly epitomising that of Joseph Campbell’s hero journey. What of course makes the story of Roy Hobbs - the fictionalised amalgam of multiple baseball players through the years, as played here on sterling form by Robert Redford – is that his story has been told in two absolute polar opposite ways, giving us two perfect modern Americanised versions of both the ultimate hero story and also the ultimate tragedy. For as much as we all know the classic ending of this film as one of the most touching and emotionally effective rousing endings of all time, the original novel by Bernard Malamumd from which the Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry screenplay comes from, ends in the ultimate tragedy. In so many ways the iconoclast nature of the film, with both its critical and commercial success and the longevity of its fandom, have more or less eclipsed the original source novel, with Levinson’s tale of triumph being all that remains. However whereas in most cases such drastic changes can often lead to many lamenting the adaptation, here I really do believe it made the film the absolute classic that it was always bound to be.

Credit

For me the biggest success of The Natural is the overall feel of a life, for as much as we only actually view in large part the period of time our lead Roy Hobbs spends with the New York Knights, we begin the film with a stirring, emotional, triumphant and effecting opening stretch where we view the origins of the many major factors of Hobbs life and relationship with baseball. However once we do focus in on this specific return period for Hobbs, we really do keep the pace going at a great clip, with frequent newspaper montages and sometimes hilarious harsh cuts from one scene to another (the desperately unceremonious cut from Michael Madsen’s “Bump” character dying straight to his funeral jumps to mind). Infact what I’m trying to suggest is instead rather that the film doesn’t present a life, as much as it represents a journey. It is no stranger to anybody who has read anything on the film, or even has the vaguest knowledge of tragic lore that the film lifts whole characters and themes from that of Greek mythology. The film doesn’t actually get past the 20 minute mark without having Barbara Hershey’s ominous femme fatale siren comment to Hobbs, “Do you read Homer?”. Every character we meet personifies one of these mythic tropes, all the while lending to the sense of the mythic and perhaps even the supernatural calibre of Hobb’s talent. Hobbs himself for instance is our hero, our Odysseus. Brought to us with the effortless charm and swagger, and ultimately heart, that Redford was so excellent at giving us in this period. His turn here as Hobbs offers the complications of a life unfulfilled, of a past shrouded in guilt, shame and mystery, aswell as aforementioned the power of that pure talent. Redford’s Hobbs is of course our lead and our driving force, however the further great strength of the film is found within its stellar ensemble cast. Everywhere you turn the film offers up another stellar turn from a great character actor, starting not the least in our prologue sequence with Robert Duvall as Max Mercy, a diabolical, if also simply working, sports journalist who is our chief myth-maker in all of this. We see the nature of Duvall’s Mercy in this prologue in his relationship with both Hobbs and Joe Don Baker as “The Whammer”, a pseudo Babe Ruth figure. The great skill of Levinson’s direction and the script is that for as much this opening prologue is entertaining, albeit ultimately devastating, it also perfectly brings us into a world unknown to most in this sort of detail, that of Baseball in the early 1900’s.

Credit

For as much Hobbs himself personifies a bygone era and a return to a more traditional form of play, nobody personifies it better than Wildred Brimley as Pop Fisher, along with Richard Farnsworth as his right hand man Red. The pairing deliver a lot of the heart and warmth in the film, showing us the ultimate effect that a game as such as this can indeed have on a person and a life. The opposite of course of this in the mythic scales and the black and white binaries that this film utilises with its heroes and villains, is indeed the villains. In this case we have two chief men who are going about removing every element of power the game can have, through nefarious rigging and bribing and trying to root out Pops. These figures come to us in The Judge and Gus, both figures literally and metaphorically shrouded in darkness, making them all the more terrifying and unsettling. But Hobbs is more or less unflappable, apart from of course in his own hubris regarding what he wishes to be his legend and beyond that his relationships with women. It is in these relationships with Kim Basinger’s sultry Memo Paris and Barbara Hershey’s cunning and nearly fatal Harriet Bird, along with even his troubled impregnation of Glen Close’s Iris Gaines (in another Oscar nominated performance), that we do see more unsullied glimpses of the darkness of the original novel. There is a major part of me that wants to see a version of this tale told as it was in the book, with all the horror and terror of a life as unfortunate as Hobb’s was, however ultimately I am very happy with the product I received, for its climax really is the stuff that great dreams are made of. All of this is underscored by perhaps the most mythic element of all, that of Randy Newman’s Oscar nominated score, which soars so effortlessly above the crowds and writhes with power and persuasion as it personifies in musicality that incredible feeling that can occur when that ball strikes that bat and the glorious sound of a ‘crack’ is released.

Credit

Whether it be in the utilisation of the story of Bama Rowell breaking the scoreboard clock at Ebbits field in 1946, or Hobbs stating to make the big leagues “you have to have a lot of little boy in you” (a real quote from catcher Roy Campanella), or even in the tragic incorporation of the bizarre incident of the shooting of first baseman Eddie Waitkus by Ruth Ann Steinhagen in 1949 – an iconic myth was made in Roy Hobbs, the natural. Levinson’s tale of ultimate triumph will never fail to warm the coldest heart and frankly ticks every possible sports movie box you could want, without ever feeling trite or corny. For a film with such a strong strain of melodrama running through it, it’s truly a feat that it never comes off as absurd or over the top. Of course it does paint in broad strokes, however never once does a single stroke not feel earned. There is a pulsating sincerity that makes this film the immense success that is, and frankly always shall be. The documentary made about the film is called The Heart of the Natural, well, for me, the heart of The Natural has always been a glorious feeling of success against the odds. And afterall isn’t that what we want from any sports movie. 

-  Thomas Carruthers