Field Of Dreams
Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella; Amy Madigan as his wife, Annie; Gaby Hoffmann as his daughter, Karin; and Dwier Brown as Ray's father, John.
Most Inspiring Film, 1989 - 5-Star Masterpiece
Field Of Dreams is about Lost Dreams and the Place to Find Them
And it's about baseball; but baseball is just a metaphor for something bigger. It's about an Iowa farmer named Ray who hears a voice that tells him, "If you build it, he will come." He knows the Voice wants him to build a baseball diamond in the middle of his cornfield; which, oddly enough, he's willing to do because he thinks it will keep him from ending up like his dad - a man that "never did one spontaneous thing in his life." But he thinks the field is for "Shoeless" Joe Jackson - one of the infamous eight "Black Sox" that were barred from baseball for life in 1920 - so he will come and play baseball again... which he does, but that's not the reason for the field.
Later, Ray gets a second message that tells him, "Ease his pain," which sends him off on a road trip to pick up Terence Mann - really J. D. Salinger, author of Catcher In The Rye, according to Shoeless Joe, the book on which the film is based - and a small town doctor named Archibald "Moonlight" Graham. Kevin Costner plays Ray, Amy Madigan plays his wife Annie, Ray Liotta play Shoeless Joe, James Earl Jones plays Terence Mann, and Burt Lancaster plays Moonlight Graham. Together they find their dreams on a baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. But, as wonderful as all this is, that is still not why Ray was told to build the field.
At the climax of the film, Ray has to make a choice between selling his farm in order to keep from being foreclosed on, and risking everything in order to keep the baseball diamond. At that point, Terence Mann makes a little speech about what is best about America, and how baseball has marked the time throughout the years and helped keep us on track. Both he and Ray's daughter, Karin (played by Gaby Hoffmann), tell Ray that if he keeps the baseball diamond, people will come and pay to see it, and that will save the farm.
But what is the baseball diamond, really?