Visually, this is a stunning movie, filmed on location in the west of Ireland. The scenery is breathtaking, even when viewed, as I did, on TV. It's the perfect backdrop for a story that focuses on the darker side of human nature. A man, Bull McCabe played by Richard Harris, tries to do what he believes to be right. And he IS right, in a certain sense, but he has become obsessed and gradually slips into madness. The field of the title is the tract of land he's worked all his life and which is now being sold to the highest bidder. He cannot accept this, nor that it is being bought by an outsider, an American with Irish roots. The film gives the viewer a powerful sense of the way Irish history (especially the double trauma of the famine and emigration) has shaped the emotions of a man like McCabe. It is as if he carries the whole tragedy of his people within, all the despair finally erupting in a fit of violence. This is where the film takes on an almost Shakespearian hue in the way events roll on like a juggernaut, beyond McCabe's control, deeper and deeper into tragedy. Richard Harris's performance is marvelous, playing McCabe as an Irish King Lear, proud, brutal, willful, but ultimately one of God's creatures: powerless to control his and other peoples lives, and you cannot help but pity him. Among the supporting cast, John Hurt gives an excellent performance, and the rest are certainly adequate. But it seems to me as if their characters stay sketches compared to the full canvas painting of Harris's McCabe. Even Sean Bean as McCabe's son, is very pale, and the sub-plot concerning his involvement with a tinker girl seems a bit contrived, almost trivializing the tension between him and the old man. Also, there seems to me to be a little trouble with the pacing; events go wrong too fast. Maybe too much was lost in the cutting room, as there are some awkward shifts. It's a pity because it tends to turn tragedy into simple accident. Nevertheless, it is a movie well worth seeing, and the first five minutes with the old man and his son gathering sea-weed by the shore, then carrying it across the mountains, in that beautiful Irish landscape, is almost worth the price alone.
