The Field movie review & film summary (1991)

His arrival inevitably precipitates a crisis in the village, which can only be settled by rape, murder and a public auction, accompanied by no end of wise epigrams by the wizened local inhabitants, who have been waiting a generation for their chance to mutter profound sayings about the land and the people who live on’t. Harris growls and howls and looks like Lear as he wades about in the bitter sea and strides through the mud and peat, and there is no doubting this is a good performance, but in the service of a hopeless cause.

If I were watching this as a play, I might just be able to care about the field, if it were located far offstage. But the motion picture camera has an unforgiving way of photographing anything that is put before it, and so we can easily see that the McCabes, father and son and father’s father and all, have been wasting their efforts dragging that wet seaweed up the cliff to fertilize the field, because the village is surrounded by thousands of acres of prime pasturage. Tom Berenger is also on a fool’s errand. Why does he need to strip the field when if there is one thing the district has more of than fields, it is mineral rights, and if there is one thing it has no need of, it is gravel? No, this play is not about the field, it is about eternal questions. Questions about (1) a man’s right to the land, (2) whether the owner should sell out to the highest bidder and (3) whether the Irish in America have lost their respect for the land and its people, and forgotten the old ways. The answer to these questions, laid out here in dirge and lamentation, is that (1) if a man and his father and his father’s father spend their lifetime dragging seaweed up a cliff and dumping it on the land, they have, by God, a right to that land, (2) the owner should therefore sell it at a loss, or give it away, and (3) yes.

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