Screen
O'Brien, Tom
be sure; the first time at bat, Hobbs literally knocks the cover off the ball. But the plot is pure "waste land," transplanted to the outfield, though perhaps too neatly. Based on Bernard...
...his good angel, Glenn Close --so wholesome-looking she's in danger of turning into cream cheese -- shows up at his crucial game wearing a hat suspiciously resembling a halo...
...The crocs are both cute and key...
...To be sure, The Natural has some very pretty scenes, expecially in gold and amber --either to match Redford's coloring or to evoke nostalgia for a golden age of American innocence (the time is 1939...
...In baseball, there is no such thing as an isolated superstar like Roy Hobbs...
...If it wasn't for the services of his faithful "Indian" companion (here a Chinese boy, but you get the idea), Indiana might not make it, especially considering the non-services of a female companion who is dumb blonde enough to high-heel it to the Himalayas...
...popular press as the Holy Office's sessions with a life of the spirit ordered to The Power of the Poor in History, a denunciation of liberation theology...
...The Natural, in short, keeps everything external, almost perversely so...
...The biblical theme of God's poor and the historical role of the poor poor in a foreign land illustrates the situa- Joseph Ratzinger within the process of liberation...
...a mine-shaft escape-ride that out-vertigoes all roller home, Spielberg is deeper --better, in short, at Indiana than coasters, cascades of water flooding the mine tunnels, and Indiana Jones...
...spear-studded chambers...
...T HE PRIESTS of Kali (remember Gunga Din ?) are at it again...
...If The Natural sacrifices its inner life to stylized exterior, Indiana Jones has no hint of interiority: it's pure outrageous action, with one special effects chase after another...
...tearing hearts out, performing human sacrifice, renewing the ancient conspiracy of the original "thugs," and chanting mantras on their route to worldwide domination...
...He is far better at films that blend myth giant bugs and bevies of snakes...
...Interestingly, forced initiation into Kali rites...
...They have stolen this sacred diamond from a poor Himalayan village (grabbing its children to boot), and ace archeologist Indiana Jones (having just narrowly escaped the clutches of a sadistic Shanghai gangster), must penetrate their secret palace, recover the diamond, rescue the kidnapped children, and destroy this focus of evil in the early twentieth-century world...
...Malamud's text cerebrally sensationalizes a reality it pretends to illuminate...
...When so predictable, the action pales...
...Redford relies on simplicity and understatement, but whether it's his acting, or the screenplay, or the cinematography, or all three, The Natural seems to lack depth...
...The only question is --There are other, more serious problems, particularly the who will tire first, Indiana, or us...
...Beginning a ten-year-old to see the film), and the stereotypical image of with the hectic Shanghai prelude, there is never a pause to an exotic country as rife with homicide and perversion...
...It's not a game of singular grand heroism, but cooperation, flexibility, reliance on others --in a word, teamwork...
...and Close Encounters...
...But the problem with The Natural isn't that the myth doesn't match the facts...
...swordfights with the High these are set in America (E.T...
...you can see the myth-fact parallels chalked on blackboards, with diagrams showing how the Knights are knights, etc...
...Part I points to the contextual reason...
...It's a classic of literary modernism...
...The game is not, as Redford claims in recent interviews, an arch-romantic encounter of one man at bat against nine on the field...
...Besides Redford, there's director Barry Levinson (formerly of Diner...
...Ironically there is no suspense in we do for an encore...
...Based on Bernard Malamud's novel, The Natural makes use of some considerable talents...
...The Pauline distinc- Joseph Ratzinger's theological analysis tion (Romans 8) between the flesh and III outlines a spirituality based on con- published in the Peruvian journal the spirit serves to contrast a life of an version, commitment to the poor, ef-Oiga and widely reported in the idolatrous covetousness for material pos- ficacious love, community, and joy...
...Part collection of essays, much more analyti- By situating liberation theol15 June 1984:375...
...The pace thereafter (if minutes to read the production teams listed on the screen "pace" applies), is a relentless assault, and, I suspect, an credits at the end of the movie, and their names occupy audience wipe-out even for the self-propelled torpedoes four-fifths of the space on Paramount's publicity foldout...
...Glenn Close (of The Big Chill, Broadway's The Real Thing, and with Duvall, the recent film, The Stone Boy...
...The cast is not just star-studded...
...Barbara Hershey (of The Right Stuff) as the first femme fatale to sidetrack Hobbs...
...Once, for example, when Hobbs is first on his way to the big leagues, he meets "the Wham- mer," a retired slugger and Babe Ruth look-alike, then strikes him out on a bet...
...Robert Duvall (of everything...
...post-Enlightenment crisis of faith and spirituality...
...If someone like Hobbs did play, the opposition would have a simple time of it: they would just walk him, each time up...
...In part, the film fails because it forces scattered elements of Malamud's story into a contrived and over predictable pattern of clich6d coincidence and symbolism...
...The exaggerated and overworked symbolism of the movie is doubled and tripled by excessive slow motion and other expressive techniques that annoyingly underline the significance of too many actions...
...the sport is not allowed to give rise to the myth, which here misses the subtlety of its raw material through gross oversimplifica- tion...
...Whereas liberation spirituality, combines liberation theol- THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY theology operates out of the experience ogy with biblical theology in a meditative OF A PEOPLE of oppression, European political theolstyle in which biblical texts serve for the Gustavo Gutt~rrez ogy is much more involved with the elaboration of themes of liberation and Orbis, $7.95, 181 pp...
...Considering their promi- TOM O'BRIEN nence in other films of this kind, they should get a nomination (Tom O'Brien, one of the guest critics reviewing moviesJor for an award sometime, or at least some credit for all their Commonweal, teaches at the Manhattan School of Music...
...The play of light and darkness, moreover, works to vulgarize the moral content of the film (the evil judge who owns the team keeps his shades drawn...
...these are stars who should be capable of concerted teamwork, who can display a special chemistry...
...The Natural in short, belies its name with studied artifice...
...A myth is imposed on the sport...
...It lacks depth especially for someone who genuinely loves baseball, since both book and movie distort whatever moral significance the game might still have, despite the greed of both players and owners...
...Books: GUTIERREZ & RATZINGER A DECADE has passed since Gustavo THE POWER OF THE cal and systematic, outlines develGutidrrez's A Theology of Libera- POOR IN HISTORY opments since Medellin, argues against tion, the classic statement of Latin Amer- SELECTED WRITINGS the anti-liberationist preparatory docuican liberation theology, was published ment written for the Puebla conference, in English...
...Here they have put because we have seen it all before -- the jaws, the chases, the their heads and stocks together in one grand effort to out-wow evil priest, the works...
...it's as if we're supposed to be on the edge is also the obscenity of the cost: $25 million...
...Unlike Malamud's protagonist, Hobbs triumphs over corruption at the end of the movie version of The Natural, but --despite the nostalgia --you never get the sense that he achieves this sentimental heroism the old-fashioned way: earning it by inner struggle...
...The problem is that the facts are far more interesting than the myth...
...Like E.T., he should come home and escape the finally (I think), a floppy suspension bridge perilously roped clutches of the evil High Priest Lucas, whose cinema rites over some gaping crocs...
...they have answered quite simply: the Indiana Jones, not because we know he will survive, but same thing, wound up to the nth degree...
...tion of the poor in Latin America...
...Hobbs's main rival on the Knights dies conveniently by crashing through an outfield fence...
...rez emphasizes the differences between volume...
...secret passages crawling with interference...
...it is nine against nine, who alternately reverse position from offense to defense (which Roy rarely has to play), who constantly shift, adjust, and measure...
...among us...
...seem to demand tearing the heart out of every film...
...with action, inner with outer, love and thrills...
...The scene takes place by an old railroad crossing as the sun sets over surrounding wheatfields...
...I hope so...
...But all Redford is given to respond with is, "God, I love baseball...
...and Wilford Brimley, one of the best supporting actors in the business, who brings to the role of Pop Fisher the same surly but good-natured charm he has displayed in The China Syndrome, Absence of Malice, Tender Mercies (with Duvall), and (of course) The Stone Boy (with Duvall and Close...
...in other words, Raiders of the Lost Ark H, without the frank- ness of that designation...
...It takes ten of our seats before we're even in them...
...But rarely in the course of filmmaking have so many, with so much, produced such an extravagant misfire...
...After a rickshaw car chase, Indiana must endure: Spielberg justifies the expense by saying that profits from mountain air crashes, treks in the high country, yucky eel such movies allow him to make better films without studio dinners at the sinister palace...
...Roy Hobbs isn't a member of a team...
...It's the first so-called "summer fun flic" of 1984, direct from Raid-ers' team Steven Spielberg and George Lucas who here give us Commonweal: 374 the cinematic equivalent to the old TV lure to "tune in next cameos...
...His new books develop, ap- Gustavo Gutt~rrez and defends liberation theology...
...It's vapid, the equivalent of "baseball has been berry berry good to me" on "Saturday Night Live" mock interviews with "Chico Escuela...
...We Drink From Our Own WE DRINK FROM OUR liberation theology and North European Wells, originally a series of talks on OWN WELLS political theology...
...Confronting the eternal show biz question ("What'll imitativeness that kills...
...Or is the right stuff too unheroic...
...There are some other powerfully elegaic touches, too many of them, in fact, and all of them obvious...
...At one point Hobbs reflects on his mistakes, and Glenn Close gets off the film's best line, "We have two lives...
...Kim Basinger (Never Say Never Again) as the second...
...The sensationally melodramatic plot is worsened by over-obvious cinematog- raphy: everytime lightning gathers in the sky over the stadium, we know that Wonderboy will strike...
...complete with arrows...
...The one we lead and the one we learn with...
...But they also illustrate the limits of this genre, an time...
...he is Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Hank Aaron rolled into one...
...love and the building of community...
...Only they point to the wrong thing...
...Consequently, Gutidrrez devel"LA TEOLUlA DE LA experience of Latin American liberation LIBERACIbN EN DEBATE" ops as his major theme the option for the spirituality...
...At Priest...
...Part II Oiga de Lima, January 23, 1984 As a volume of advocacy and defense, develops discipleship as the following of The Power of the Poor in History can Jesus in order to relate spirituality to Francis Schussles~Fiorenza readily be compared with Cardinal Jesus's life-praxis...
...all other action-adventure fantasies...
...Gutidrply, and defend the basic themes of that Orbis, $10.95, 240 pp...
...violence (Spielberg has acknowledged that he would not send Indiana Jones is exhausting and finally boring...
...There Indiana's escapades...
...and their son (a completely new addition) shows up at his last game to provide that extra edge of inspiration...
...Such is the plot of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom...
Vol. 111 • June 1984 • No. 12
