[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by conor912

What separates FoD from The Natural for me is the fact that FoD is supernatural. You just check your suspension of disbelief at the door and enjoy it for what it is. The Natural tried (and IMO failed) to be perfectly realistic. It just came off as hokey to me.

Except, The Natural isn't trying to come across as a realistic baseball film, at all. It is, in fact, quite supernatural. Bernard Malamud's novel is allegorical.

On the train ride after Roy Hobbs strikes out the Whammer, Harriet Bird asks Hobbs if he'd ever read Homer.

"Homer lived ages ago, and wrote about heroes and gods. And he would've written about baseball had he seen you out there today."

This is the first point in the movie where Roy Hobbs is likened to a mythical character. She then references Arthurian Legend, invoking the name of Sir Lancelot, Arthur's "greatest knight" that was felled by his uncontrollable desire for Guinevere. This was his fatal flaw; Roy Hobbs' fatal flaw is hubris.

Hobbs opines that his one and only goal in this life is to achieve baseball immortality:

"You know what? Someday, l'll break every record in the book. When I walk down the street, people will say, "There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was."

Hobbs is so focused on achieving baseball legend that everything else in his life falls by the wayside. His relationship with his childhood love, Iris, fades away, even though he promises her that he will call for her after he makes it to the Majors. He later laments that he should have seen Harriet Bird for what she was; his tunnel vision blinded him to how dangerous she was. He'd just heard a story read from a newspaper that two world class athletes had been shot to death, mere days apart.

When Roy Hobbs finally makes it to the Major Leagues, nearly two decades after being shot in Harriet Bird's hotel room with a silver bullet (which, in and of itself, carries a magical connotation), he joins the fictitious baseball team the New York Knights. The team name alludes to the heroic Knights of the Round Table. This scene immediately follows the one where Hobbs is shot, and Bird jumps from her hotel window to her death. We've seen Hobbs' fall, and now the hero's reclamation begins.

For his first Major League at bat, Hobbs takes out the bat he made as a boy, from a tree that was split in two by lightning the night after his father died. The young Hobbs etched a lightning bolt on his bat, naming it "Wonder Boy". Manager Pop Fisher tells Hobbs to "knock the cover off the ball." After lightning flashes across the sky, Hobbs swings....



He proceeds to knock the cover off the baseball, and circles the bases, sliding in the mud into third base. The game lifts the Knights, who had been mired in a losing streak. The lightning bolt that split the tree, that appears on the bat, and that appears again just before Hobbs swings, are symbolic of Zeus, and Greek Mythology.

After the death of right fielder Bump Bailey (he dies crashing into the outfield wall chasing a fly ball), Hobbs wins the starting job, and encounters temptation in the form of Bailey's girlfriend, Memo Paris (played by Kim Basinger). Memo is Pop Fisher's niece, but he thinks she is bad luck. He does not know she is part of a nefarious plot. Fisher has entered into an arrangement with team owner Judge Banner; if the Knights win the pennant, Banner is out as team owner. If they do not, Fisher will be out of a job. Memo is employed by Banner and Gus Sands, an Arnold Rothstein-type hood that was involved in Hobbs' shooting nearly two decades earlier.

"I once bet money on three pitched balls (the balls Hobbs threw in striking out The Whammer, which cost Sands a large amount of money). The next week I ruined the guy with a different deal (he had Harriet Bird shoot him; pictures taken of her half naked body in the street, and Hobbs in her hotel room, could be used by Sands for blackmail in the future)".

Symbolism abounds. The sinister Judge "much prefers to sit in dark rooms". Memo Paris dresses in black; these characters, along with Gus Sands, are representative of evil forces at work.

When Hobbs begins a relationship with Memo, he badly slumps at the plate. Then, in an away game against the Chicago Cubs, his childhood love, Iris Gaines, appears in the stands, standing up, dressed in white, bathed in sunlight, symbolic of purity and goodness. Hobbs connects with the next pitch, driving it deep for a home run that breaks the scoreboard clock.



The Knights rally, and take sole possession of first place. But when Hobbs is rushed to the hospital because the silver bullet used by Harriet Bird has eaten away at the lining of his stomach, the Knights falter; at the end of the season, the Pittsburgh Pirates tie them for the league lead. A final game will determine who wins the pennant, and moves on to the World Series. Hobbs is told that if he plays again, his stomach could rupture, killing him instantly. Knowing that he could die, he decides to play that final game.

Hobbs learns that the Judge has a contingency plan in place; he's paid starting pitcher Al Fowler to throw the game, assuring that Fisher would be gone after the last out. Roy convinces the pitcher to "give them the real stuff". With the Knights behind, and down to their final out, Hobbs, who has struck out three times, comes to the plate. As blood from his stomach stains his jersey, Hobbs swings, and connects.



He hits a two run home run, and wins the game. Having put the good of the team, and Pop Fisher's future ahead of his own well-being, the hero's reclamation is complete; Hobbs is no longer focused on his immortality. He has beaten his demons, and found peace with Iris and their son. The final scene of the film shows Roy playing catch with his boy in the fields, Iris smiling and looking on.

The Natural just drips with symbolism, metaphor and allegory. It is clearly not just meant to be a realistic depiction of the National Pastime.

As an aside, I love The Natural and Field of Dreams, both, for different reasons. I watch each of them multiple times every year.