The Natural (1984)

(On Cable TV, April 2019) Much as baseball is the great American pastime, I’m starting to suspect that baseball movies are the great American cinematic comfort food. Americans understand the rules, they know the game inside-out, they are comfortable with the pacing and they will find the tiniest of evidence to prove that baseball is life and life is baseball. Or something like that. Watching The Natural isn’t quite as mystical as other baseball movies (Looking at you, Field of Dreams), but it’s still not quite realistic, not quite ordinary, not quite believable either. (A prologue with a bat being carved out of wood felled by a lightning strike at least establishes the tone early.)  What The Natural does have going for it is Robert Redford being effortlessly charming, and a roster of supporting actors that include Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Barbara Hershey and Wilford Brimley. The big hook of the film has to do with our protagonist being felled by a bullet from a psychotic fan before becoming a star, and then coming back to the game a decade and a half later as a natural talent. There’s a mystery to it that proves less impressive than imagined, but the rest of director Barry Levinson’s film does run on rails all the way to a crucial win. What keeps the film interesting are those incidents approaching the supernatural that are littered around the main plot. By the time our protagonist hits a climactic pitch right into the stadium lights and creates fireworks, you’re either so solidly in the film’s distinctive logic that you’ll cheer, or roll your eyes one last time and say “That’s it, I’m done.”