Field of Dreams

By the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties Kevin Costner was at his highest pitch. Long before embarking in genuine flops like "Waterworld" or "The Messenger," Kevin Costner usually hit when choosing a project. It was the time of "Dances with Wolves" and this small but sentimentally effective and nostalgic "Field of Dreams."

Costner is Ray Kinsella, a novice farmer who is suddenly surprised by a strange voice while walking amid his corn crops. "If you build it, he will come," said the spooky but soft voice.

Initially confused about its meaning, Kinsella soon has a vision -- a baseball field built in his corn crops -- getting seized with the feeling that if he build it, a former White Sox player, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, will show up and play ball again. The only trouble is, Jackson is already deceased. After he threw the 1919 World Series Jackson was banned and never played again professionally, eventually dying in 1951.

Deciding to find out, Kinsella builds the field, mowing a huge area of his crops and risking loosing his entire farm. Months go by and his baseball field just stands there, empty and alone, until one night when he sees a man standing at the dark diamond -- Shoeless Joe Jackson.

But Jackson is not alone. An entire baseball team of ancient players comes out of the crops like magic and starts to use the field as their private playing ground. "Is this heaven?" asks Shoeless Joe. "No. It's Iowa." Answers Kinsella.

Satisfied with his accomplishment Kinsella feels that his task is completed. But he is wrong. The voice sounds again for him with another demand that makes him embark on an even deeper journey, rescuing lost desires.

Adapted from the book Shoeless Joe Jackson by W.P. Kinsella, "Field of Dreams" uses the ghosts not as images of lost people, but as images of lost feelings and desires. Like a field of second chances, in this particular diamond everybody will be able to revive what they once love but couldn't do anymore for a reason or another.

The movie portrays the love of baseball, misfiling the sport as the axe from which the whole story swings. In this movie the ghosts won't give you the creeps, they will give you hope, an unconditional feeling and desire of go back in time and redo everything left behind.

Other names in the cast are James Earl Jones, as the writer Terrence Mann -- actually the writer's name was switched in the adaptation, in the book the writer is J.D. Salinger -- and Burt "the grin" Lancaster, making a cameo as an old doctor who will also have the chance to play baseball again.

Don't expect any explanation of how is this all possible, you won't get it. Instead, just sit back and enjoy the magical moments that happen in this field of dreams.