I've just joined the club and the first film I felt the need to comment on was this, "Field of Dreams". Why? Because, firstly, it's haunted me since its release and secondly, because it had such a cathartic effect upon me. Like so many young people, I lost my dad when I was in my teens. I was fifteen. I'm fifty-nine now. The lost opportunity, the grief, cling to you like lead. When you need to discuss the paradoxes of this world with someone, you find they are gone. They will not return. Though by no means a perfect film - would we ever really want to see a perfect film? - it has heart, a centre to it that opens gateways for those bereft, even though unaware, by loss. I remember watching it the first time on the back row of a cinema with my ex-wife - long after back rows had any import - and, at the end, having to physically contain the need to sob uncontrollably. This had never happened to me before (unless you go back to Elvis riding into the hills at the end of Flaming Star when I was but a snivelling - and probably dysfunctional - early teen. The movie is a masterpiece in that it lives with you decades after its first viewing. In that you cannot analyse it, breaking it down cynically into manipulative parts. I've seen thousands of films and with each one that I feel has entered my soul I always ask myself, has it reached beyond Field of Dreams? In some respects the answer is yes, yet these are technical analyses of product. I've never had to do that with Field of Dreams. It is itself and defies scrutiny as would Gandhi defy psychoanalysis. It is, to itself, true. The cast are great. To this day, despite much, I like Kevin Costner. My sole concern is, why the hell can't I buy "Shoeless Joe", the novel upon which it was based and which I read in the late eighties? It contains much more background and is, in itself, an absorbing read. Dave Marshall
