It's a small, taut, tragic story of Richard Harris, as Bull McCabe, a sclerotic Irish patriarch who plans on buying at auction the grassy field that he and his family have worked on (and died on) for many years. The land is owned by a widow, however, who has been harassed by Harris and his son, Sean Bean, and is determined to see that the McCabe's don't get it. When a wealthy American (Tom Berenger) shows up, interested in building a cement highway across the field, and harnessing the local waterfalls for hydroelectric power, it certainly looks like McCabe isn't going to get it.
Well, McCabe gets it, but not before he accidentally beats Berenger to death and hides the body. It costs him everything he has -- whatever peace of mind he had, his money, his son, his status in the church, his friends, his cattle, and finally his sanity. He who has been virtually running the village, snarling out gruff orders to others, now runs wild, alone, stampeding his cattle over a cliff and onto the rocks below, ranting and screaming like Lear on the moor, driving his son over the cliff as well. After this, still bellowing, McCabe wades out into the sea to his death.
Richard Harris does a bang-up, pretty much overwrought job in this role, which was his last. He looks like Michelangelo's sculpture of Pope Julius II, with his remaining gray hair like an unruly coxcomb atop his head and this beard of Biblical proportions. It's the kind of performance that cries out for an Academy Award nomination. Harris got the nomination but didn't win. It was a depressing story about the small-minded people of an Irish village in the 1930s, flailing about in the rain and mud. Not a big star in it. Who needed it? Though, come to think of it, James Coburn won an award for a similar dramatic role after a similar lifetime career playing support or leads in routine movies. Coburn was good in "Affliction" but Harris does a better job with a more complex role here.
Well, I wasn't surprised that Harris didn't win, nor did I particularly care. Movies about feuds over a plot of land usually don't win Oscars. Usually the awards go to far better films, films with artistic content that illustrate the human condition, thoughtful and challenging films that carry a great deal of philosophical weight -- "Titanic" and "Pearl Harbor," for instance.
If nothing else, "The Field" is a corrective to fairyland presented to us in "The Quiet Man." Having said that, can I still recommend seeing this movie? Not only is Richard Harris great in it, but so is just about everyone else, including John Hurt as a semi-retard, Sean Bean as the sensitive son, Tom Berenger as the not-insensitive rich American, and a host of nameless supporting players.
Yes, it is a small movie about a small thing. But small things can carry stones of symbolic weight. A slap in the face is a small thing.
Well, McCabe gets it, but not before he accidentally beats Berenger to death and hides the body. It costs him everything he has -- whatever peace of mind he had, his money, his son, his status in the church, his friends, his cattle, and finally his sanity. He who has been virtually running the village, snarling out gruff orders to others, now runs wild, alone, stampeding his cattle over a cliff and onto the rocks below, ranting and screaming like Lear on the moor, driving his son over the cliff as well. After this, still bellowing, McCabe wades out into the sea to his death.
Richard Harris does a bang-up, pretty much overwrought job in this role, which was his last. He looks like Michelangelo's sculpture of Pope Julius II, with his remaining gray hair like an unruly coxcomb atop his head and this beard of Biblical proportions. It's the kind of performance that cries out for an Academy Award nomination. Harris got the nomination but didn't win. It was a depressing story about the small-minded people of an Irish village in the 1930s, flailing about in the rain and mud. Not a big star in it. Who needed it? Though, come to think of it, James Coburn won an award for a similar dramatic role after a similar lifetime career playing support or leads in routine movies. Coburn was good in "Affliction" but Harris does a better job with a more complex role here.
Well, I wasn't surprised that Harris didn't win, nor did I particularly care. Movies about feuds over a plot of land usually don't win Oscars. Usually the awards go to far better films, films with artistic content that illustrate the human condition, thoughtful and challenging films that carry a great deal of philosophical weight -- "Titanic" and "Pearl Harbor," for instance.
If nothing else, "The Field" is a corrective to fairyland presented to us in "The Quiet Man." Having said that, can I still recommend seeing this movie? Not only is Richard Harris great in it, but so is just about everyone else, including John Hurt as a semi-retard, Sean Bean as the sensitive son, Tom Berenger as the not-insensitive rich American, and a host of nameless supporting players.
Yes, it is a small movie about a small thing. But small things can carry stones of symbolic weight. A slap in the face is a small thing.