"If you build it, he will come."

This year is the 25th Anniversary of the release of cinematic gold, "Field of Dreams". Perhaps, given the anniversary, cinematic silver would be a more appropriate description? And yet I feel that this would not do this piece of art justice.

Set ostensibly in 1988, FOD could be said to be a film dwelling on what is past; something to which I think we can all relate.

Now there's a tendency for those whose interests do not lie in baseball to write this film off as outside their interests. That is a mistake. I believe that there is not a person unable to find something in the film that speaks to them directly; much like the voice heard by protagonist, Ray Kinsella.

"If you build it, he will come" - is this a modern day Noah's ark? I suppose it could be. Certainly there is some question as to where the baseball players come from to play at an isolated ballpark in Iowa in the middle of cornfields. Divine intervention? Guardian angel? Whatever the cause, it almost doesn't matter. What is important is the resolve with which our hero follows his heart despite bankruptcy and all rational thought.

I feel that I may just be getting ahead of myself. Let me just do a brief recap.... Anyone who has yet to watch the film, I suggest you go away and do so right now and then come straight back and finish this post. Okay, and with that spoiler alert let's get going.

Ray, a farmer in Iowa, hears a mysterious voice telling him "if you build it, he will come". This voice from nowhere makes appearances on several occasions with the same phrase. Ray ploughs a field of corn with his super cute little girl sat with him on the tractor, and begins to build a baseball field in the last place one might expect to find such a thing. Everyone thinks Ray is mad, and all through the winter months the field sits behind the house reminding the Kinsellas of their financial struggles. Why he built it, nobody really knows.

Come the new year, a miracle happens. Shoeless Joe Jackson emerges from the corn to play. Here's the point where I should add that Shoeless is supposed to be dead. And if he turned out not to be dead he ought to be pretty damn old by 1988! So it's immediately clear that this baseball player is part of a very realistic fantasy team. What is unclear is whether Shoeless is a figment of Ray's imagination, or whether he is some kind of angel/ghost.

More players appear and Ray goes to find Terence Mann, reporter extraordinaire.

Onwards. It's truly beautiful. Moonlight Graham, who only played one game, became a doctor and is dead. Yet somehow Archie Graham (young Moonlight) appears on the side of the road as a hitchhiker and Ray takes him to the ballpark. Time's have been hard and Ray's brother in law is set upon buying Ray out as the land is just too valuable to let sit unused as a baseball park. He is apparently unable to see the ghost team playing. That is until Karin (Ray's daughter) who has told her father that "they will come" - almost disturbing parroting of the whole theme - falls off the "bleachers" and is choking. Archie steps over the line, into reality and transforms into the Doctor he became (although the Doctor is of course dead). He saves Karin but heartbreakingly Ray realises that Archie cannot go back. So yet again Moonlight only gets to play one game.

The team vanishes into the corn leaving one player behind. And it's HIM of course. Him being Ray's father. Ray snubbed the sport, and his father's hero (Shoeless) which led to a kind of estrangement. He plays a long overdue game of catch with the younger form of his father. It's so moving I dare you to watch it without crying. And as the camera pans out, "they" are coming. In huge numbers.

It's completely gorgeous. Most of all in the symmetry between the two bits of Archie story. I was moved beyond expectations.

I cannot recommend this film enough. There's a reason that it is raved about.

So on one of those rainy days which are inevitable as we move into autumn/fall, I hope you might think about watching this. Not least because of James Earl Jones's voice (and JEJ generally), Burt Lancaster for being Burt Lancaster, Kevin Costner for a beautifully honest character of Ray, and Archie. Oh, Archie.

So... what are you still doing reading this. Get onto Netflix NOW.