It’s football season and I want to clear some things up. The sports movie genre is over-saturated with dramatic scenes, ones where Troy throws a touchdown pass to Chad to beat West Side High — and they get the girls, too. The trouble with these types of movies are for the non-sports fans who don’t quite relate to the situational conflict on screen. My mom could never watch a movie like “Any Given  Sunday” and really connect to the football action.

As a sports enthusiast, I must admit that I was born to be a bit more romantic about athletic contest, believing it to be more of an art than a game. The best sports movies are those movies not actually about sports. In these flicks, sports are the vessel by which the director makes their social comment.

I apologize in advance for leaving out “The Sandlot.” Damn, I love that movie. Sorry, guys.

“The Natural” (1984)

Robert Redford, Wilfred Brimley, Robert Duvall and Glenn Close star in this 1981 mystical baseball film about the fictional Roy Hobbs, “the greatest there ever was.” Enter the Depression era, Midwest America. Hobbs (Redford) is a talented young baseball player, and when a reporter from Chicago (Duvall) hears of Hobbs’ talent, he offers him a try-out for the Chicago Cubs. When they get there, Hobbs is shot by a mysterious woman, and disappears from the public eye for years.

Whoa, Right? That happens in the first ten minutes. Seriously, those details are given away in the trailer. Ballsy.

The rest of the story surrounds Hobbs’ path to revival aboard the meager New York Knights. The team’s bushy-browed and heavily-whiskered manager Pop Fisher (Brimley) is initially speculative of Hobbs, claiming his presence on the team as a “publicity stunt.” It’s a tough journey for Hobbs, as he struggles with criticism from fans and teammates about his age and his past. Eventually Hobbs finds success, leading the Knights on a run to the National League Pennant.

“The Natural” is not “Rocky.” While Hobbs was undoubtedly an underdog, this is a tale of “what might have been,” a shimmering moment for Hobbs to hang his hat on after a long life of what-ifs. “The Natural” maintains mystery throughout. While Hobbs’ heroics eventually deliver his team, his actions don’t define him, nor do the real events of the movie accurately project the mood achieved through minimalism.

Robert Redford is perfect for this mood piece, his demeanor pitching Hobbs as a shadowy ghost of baseball greats past. “The Natural” is much more about fate than baseball, much more about the untold stories behind Hobbs’ poised gaze. Hobbs carries with him the muted stories of lost time and the painful past that kept him from his boyhood dream. Who can’t relate?

“Field of Dreams” (1989)

“If you build it, he will come.”

Field of Dreams might be my favorite movie ever.

Based off W.P. Kinsella’s novel “Shoeless Joe,” “Field of Dreams” stars Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella, a humble farmer from Iowa who combs his corn field for all of life’s answers. Kinsella is a lifelong baseball fan whose father died before he “really got to know him,” then forcing himself to love the land like his dad loved the game of baseball. Kinsella thinks he’s crazy when he hears a voice on the wind speaking ,”If you build it, he will come.”

Kinsella convinces himself he must handcraft a baseball field, sacrificing his precious maize for a makeshift diamond, complete with backstops and bleachers. Shortly thereafter, Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) appears from out of the corn behind left field, seemingly fulfilling the prophetic voice heard weeks before. Soon, more players — long since deceased — come out of the corn and on to Kinsella’s magical baseball field. Despite financial pitfall, Kinsella goes to great lengths to discover the meaning of the greater power that questions and propels his being. For many people this is Kevin Costner’s best movie; his tee shirt tucked in his jeans, exploring an ironed, blue-collar bewilderment — a young, working man who just can’t figure it out.

The film follows Costner as he desperately tries to find the solution to the internal questions that pervade him, even “kidnapping” controversial writer Terrance Mann (James Earl Jones) along the way. Jones is awesome as an estranged author, just as misunderstood and lost as Costner. Through and through, Field of Dreams explores the questions and doubts that lie inside all of us.

“A River Runs Through It” (1992)

Robert Redford directed this quiet epic about the things you love and the things you can’t change. Based on the autobiographical works of Norman Maclean, “A River Runs Through It” speaks volumes on pride, family, fate and change, with Redford using the grandiose Montana landscape as backdrop for the small life of a frontier family. For them, there was no difference between religion and fishing, and Redford maintains the necessary reverence to bring the novella to the screen.

I am by no means an angler, but you do not need to be fisherman, nor a Montanan, to love Redford’s ode to the rivers and streams that crack and converge throughout life. The cast is spearheaded by Tom Skerritt as Minister Maclean, Norman’s father (Craig Sheffer) and Paul (Brad Pitt) in frontier Montana throughout the first 30 years of the 20th century, as a patient Redford follows the Maclean brothers as they flow from boys to men, from love and love lost. “A River Runs Through It” hardly makes plot progress despite covering over 20 years time, its intentions instead a character study into the relationship between Norman, Paul and their father, ultimately using fly-fishing as the vessel to relay the delicate dynamic between the three.

A young Brad Pitt is a perfect cast as the younger Maclean brother, his brandished charm and deadly innocence a parallel to the unsullied, primitive American state in the early 20th century. Pitt’s portrayal of Paul’s charisma shines throughout the film. “A River Runs Through It” is a slow watch, and to be honest, this movie is not for everyone. It’s as much a statement about the patience necessary to love those too close to us to change as it is a reflective memoir about the things that keep Norman Maclean up at night.

Honorable Mentions:  ”Heaven Can Wait,” “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” “Raging Bull.”

Brian Hamlin is a junior communications and rhetorical studies major. His column appears weekly in Pulp. He can be reached at brhamlin@syr.edu.

Published on September 18, 2016 at 9:01 pm