The Natural: adapted from the Bernard Malamud novel by Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry; directed by Barry Levinson; starring Robert Redford (Roy Hobbs), Robert Duvall (Max Mercy), Glenn Close (Iris Gaines), Kim Basinger (Memo Paris), Wilford Brimley (Pop Fisher), Barbara Hershey (Harriet Bird), Robert Prosky (The Judge), and Darren McGavin (Gus Sands) (1984):
Bernard Malamud's much more downbeat bit of American Arthuriana becomes instead a whimsical myth of a movie, filled with out-sized moments, signs, portents, lightning, and destiny. I like it a lot. If you're looking for a realistic baseball movie, look elsewhere. The cast is terrific throughout, including the curiously unbilled Darren McGavin as gambler Gus Sands, who probably fixed the World Series in the universe of The Natural.
Set in 1939, The Natural follows one miraculous season in the life of 36-year-old rookie Roy Hobbs, a phenom who vanished for 16 years after being shot by a woman who went around shooting great athletes, usually fatally. Hobbs gets signed by the New York Knights, whose crusty old manager/part-owner Wilford Brimley is reluctant to play him despite the fact that the Knights are super-terrible. But eventually Hobbs will play. Birds will sing. Lightning will strike.
Malamud loaded up the original novella with a mash-up of mythic elements. The movie also plays with the stories of King Arthur, the legend of the Fisher King, and the journeys of Odysseus. Or in other words, that dug-out water fountain that Pops Fisher complains about early on has mythic significance. His name is Fisher, he's the king of a baseball team named the Knights, and he's having trouble getting decent water. Oh, go look it up.
Is there a never-healed wound in someone's side? Is there a temptress whose name keeps getting pronounced so as to rhyme with 'Nimue'? Will someone at last set his lands in order? Oh, watch it. It's great, and Barry Levinson keeps things just light enough and goofy enough at times that the viewer doesn't choke on all the allusions and portents.
Robert Redford was perfectly cast as Roy Hobbs, who is in many ways the Light Side of Jay Gatsby, whom Redford also played. And it's bracing to see Robert Duvall play a complete jerk as reporter/cartoonist Max Mercy -- it makes you realize that he seems to have spent the 30 years since The Natural playing lovable curmudgeons. Highly recommended.
Hellboy: The Storm and the Fury: written by Mike Mignola; illustrated by Duncan Fegredo and Dave Stewart (2011-2012): The Duncan Fegredo-drawn 'middle section' of the main Hellboy saga (as opposed to the time-and-space-ranging standalones and miniseries, drawn by many) apparently comes to an end here. The last part of the saga begins in December with the first issue of Hellboy in Hell as Mike Mignola returns to the drawing board.
Fegredo really did a marvelous job over the last five years or so on the main sequence, his style similar to Mignola's without slavishly mimicking it. Fegredo really became a master of grotesqueries as he went along, though his Hellboy and others always seemed a bit skinnier to me than some of Mignola's blockier creations.
But it's been a heck of a ride, and probably not an easy one to illustrate: the second act of Hellboy left the more familiar plots of the first act behind, moving Hellboy from being a paranormal investigator with the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence to a wandering hero whose quest never seemed entirely clear because Hellboy himself wasn't clear about it -- or sober for long sections of it.
Mignola and Fegredo supply a handy bit of summary towards the beginning here, voiced by Hellboy himself, before moving to the main action. And what action it is, as Hellboy and his giant hand of doom must stop the end of everything or die trying.
Unlikely allies arise, including Queen Mab and Baba Yaga and a mysterious little girl. Loose ends, signs, and portents set up in the previous 11 volumes suddenly start to make sense, often in startling fashion. There is Ragna Rok and King Arthur and the last weird battle in the West. There is an evil badger and a repentant pig. There's a dragon that bleeds molten gold.
And there's Hellboy, perhaps overmatched but always game for a fight. He doesn't know when to stop punching, and while he was born a demon, he's ultimately humanity's best friend. Or fiend. And boy, can that guy take a punch!
Everything comes to a crashing conclusion which is really only an intermission between one important battle and what will ultimately be the war for humanity. And I'm excited to see what's next. Highly recommended.
