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Robert Redford stars as Roy Hobbs in this 1930s baseball fantasy about a middle-aged rookie who leads a down-and-out team to the top of the league with his seemingly supernatural batting skills. But when a duplicitous woman (Kim Basinger) takes his mind off the game and the team’s owner (Robert Prosky) pressures him to take a dive for the sake of shady gambling, victory is far from certain. It takes an old flame (Glenn Close) re-entering his life to bring his childhood baseball dreams back within reach.
Based on the book by Bernard Malamud and directed by Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Diner), The Natural is a warm, fanciful, and deeply nostalgic film that introduces Roy as a mysterious, mythic figure. In flashbacks, we watch him create his own baseball bat, ‘Wonder Boy’, from a lightning-struck tree under which his father died from a heart attack. Just when he leaves home to seek out a career, he’s shot by a strange woman (Barbara Hershey) in an attempted murder/suicide and told he’ll never play baseball again. The main story picks up sixteen years later, as Roy is placed with a losing team coached by Wilford Brimley (Cocoon, The Thing), who thinks Prosky set him up with a middle-aged loser. But when Roy demonstrates his ability to send baseballs flying out of the stadium, Brimley begins to hope against hope for a final, single win at the end of his coaching career.
The weakest part of the film is the middle, when Roy begins faltering under the influence of Basinger’s slutty character, only to be ‘restored’ by Close’s more angelic one. This isn’t the only heaven/hell dichotomy explored by Levinson, who portrays childhood flashbacks in golden-hour fields of heavenly wheat, while Prosky’s villainous character is portrayed living in a coffin-like tower room without any lights on. The indications are corny at times — but if you think of The Natural as a melodramatic bedtime story instead of a realistic one, you’ll find enjoyment in its aesthetic beauty and emotional payoff.
Redford, like his character, is enigmatic here. He has moments where he gets angry, but he’s mostly pretty even-keeled, the way you imagine a mythic hero to be. Warm, grounded performances come from Close, Brimley, and Richard Farnsworth as Brimley’s elderly assistant coach. We get cold villainy from Prosky, Basinger, and Darren McGavin as Prosky’s right-hand man, a practicer of magic with an unsettling false eye. Robert Duvall gives a terrific supporting turn as a selfish but entertaining newspaper man determined to learn Roy’s private history and share it with the world. The phenomenal cast also includes Michael Madsen and Joe Don Baker.
Anyone struggling to swallow The Natural‘s blending of period melodrama with religious allegory and flat-out fantasy might be — nay, should be — swayed by Caleb Deschanel’s exquisite cinematography and the very best score of Randy Newman’s career. Both set a palpable mood and transport us to another time and place in the most powerful ways possible. People can argue about whether the corniness and sentimentality work here, but there’s no questioning that The Natural is one of the best-looking and best-sounding films of the ’80s.
Note: If given the choice, watch the original theatrical version of this movie. The Director’s Cut reconfigures the first twenty minutes of the movie but has less of a dramatic impact.
Oscar Nominations: Best Supporting Actress (Glenn Close), Cinematography, Art Direction, Score