Friday, January 10, 2020

Maybe its about farming. . .

It's odd how you can pick up new things from a great movie no matter how many times you have seen it.  Indeed, perhaps you are more likely to pick up subtle things if you've seen a movie more than once, and some time has passed since you last saw it.

Anyhow, in the great Robert Redford film The Natural, the first reference to farming is vague, in the for of a youthful Roy Hobbs leaving the farming Midwest to try out in baseball.  We are soon years later when he appears at a dugout as a middle aged rookie for a team coached by Pop Fisher, who is lamenting not having become a farmer.

Towards the climax, an injured but seemingly recovered Hobbs reappears when Fisher is again delivering a version of the same speech about lamenting not having become a farmer.  Hobbs relates that "there's nothing like a farm" and discusses farming romantically.  Fisher relates that "my mother wanted always wanted me to be a farmer" to which Hobbs relates "my father wanted me to be a baseball player".

In the end, Hobbs is back on the farm, having returned to it, and his first love.

Something going on there.

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