Thursday with Robert Redford

‘The Natural’ (1984)

The conflict of director Barry Levinson’s dreamlike The Natural is the good versus the beguiling. This unusual motion picture is a mythical dramatization of the baseball player. The 1984 film is neither gritty nor modern. Like any good sports movie, especially the baseball movie, this is a fable. But, despite any flaws, it’s better than fabulous. Embellished and stylized, The Natural is carefully designed to affirm the good. Because the movie’s mysterious, even cryptic, today’s audiences could be puzzled. In the age of distraction, viewers could be easily tempted to drift from watching The Natural, featuring Robert Redford as the godlike athlete.

For over two hours, however, if you can steel yourself to indulge in Mr. Levinson’s epic story of goodness, as you would listen to the reading of a heroic if layered poem, the movie unfolds in beautiful moving pictures inducing a wondrous feeling. This is not to say that The Natural’s made to make you feel good, though it’s likely that it will…