When the 'pause' carries the emotional charge...
by Jason Makansi (originally posted on Substack)
I responded to a post the other day about which scene in a movie still gets you after all these years. Well, there are many, but this one I’m about to divulge has so much to say about “art.”
I responded with the scene in Field of Dreams when Costner’s character’s ghost dad emerges from the corn field. They have a conversation. The ghost is about to return to the field. Costner looks at him walking away (I think) and says, “Hey, Dad, you want…you wanna have a catch?”
Field of Dreams isn’t a great film IMHO. It’s a trophy hall of tropes. It’s too overtly sentimental for my tastes. The acting is lacking (especially James Earl Jones). Again my take. But I watch it every time it comes on. It’s about baseball. It’s about the mythology of baseball to adults like me. I only played baseball through 8th grade. I was mediocre, and too short during the period in a boy’s life when he’s going to be groomed for sports. My dad, an immigrant PhD chemical engineer, had no interest in American sports (well, any sports for that matter). My mom did enjoy baseball, and attended all my games she was able, but there were four of us to manage. But it really takes a dad. Back then anyway.
And so, the scene. It’s embodies everything missing in my quest to be a professional ball player in my youth. It opens a vein of emotion in me which I am powerless to prevent. But here’s the thing. It’s not the words Costner utters that get me. It’s when his voice breaks. There’s an ever so slight pause. It’s like he’s thinking, should I even ask? Do I sound weak? Should this emotion I’m feeling be covered up with a joke or something (which is what I’d probably do)? Ah, he’ll just go back into the field no matter what I want.
The character reveals so much vulnerability in this line, but more so in the PAUSE. Was this pause organic, an accident in the moment, did it have a dialogue tag in the script, or was it “directed” in?
Whatever. That’s the power of white space in art.
A Tucson sunset: the magical and emotional and artistic pause between day and night.
Years after, in my early fifties maybe, I was sitting with my dad in the TV room of the home I grew up in. We were watching Field of Dreams. As we got to the the scene in question, I kept looking at my dad, wondering, thinking, hoping he would have as visceral a reaction as I did. Please, dad, didn’t you really want to have a catch with me back then? Well, of course, he didn’t react at all. I did mention to him that I loved that scene. Still no reaction. Then I laughed to myself. There was no good reason to think he’d have a reaction. Baseball still didn’t mean anything to him. And the one time I remember that we did have a “catch” when I was little, it didn’t end well. HIs upbringing was way different from mine. Way, way different.
But…the awesome power of a pause!
White space.
To be the surgical knife that opens that vein! Out pours psychology, need, grief, trauma, joy, empathy, understanding. Isn’t that what we crave to mediate through art, a portal into the mind and the soul?
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