Eephus Review: Root, root, root for the home team
Carson Lund's lively, strange, and melancholy baseball movie is one of the year's best.
Carson Lund's Eephus is a tranquil, punchy, oddly wonderful film about change explored through the traditions of America's favorite pastime — bravado, bench-warming, booze, all of it. When you watch a baseball picture, you have natural expectations. You can count on at least one jockstrap yuk if it's a comedy. If it's a drama, horns will play over sepia-toned shots of the stands, home plate, and the dugout. Both will have a moment of triumph, and the sold-out stadium erupts into a cacophony of agony and ecstasy. One aspect of Eephus that's as tropey as anything found in the typical baseball yarn is its autumn setting, with orange leaves canopying the outfield, evoking the inevitable passage of time. Just don't expect anyone on screen to get too sentimental about it.
Set entirely during the final game between local rivals Adler's Paint and the Riverdogs, two small-town Massachusetts teams made up of curmudgeons, beer-swilling enthusiasts, and up-and-coming athletes with varying levels of commitment to the sport, Eephus showcases a terrifically salty community of dudes. Whether through routine, a desire to cling to the vestiges of youth, or simply a love of the game, they arrive at Soldier's Field, warm up, and play their last together, an act of significance that most won't bother acknowledging by the film's end. That's okay; baseball is their game, not making avowals.
This sunny day, which stretches into an anxious, wearisome night, holds a range of significance for the players. However, Lund is less interested in digging into the sappy backstories that shape everyone’s fading glory days than in exploring the comic, surprisingly dreamlike, and fleeting nature of each sharply composed moment. His diverse and doughy cast goes through the motions of the game, occasionally complaining about backaches or work the next day. Few recognize that this will be the last time they share the baseball diamond (it's to be bulldozed to make way for a school) and try to make the most of it, while others seize the earliest opportunity to cut and run.
Like I say, Eephus can be dreamlike, but the details crafted by Lund and co-screenwriters Michael Basta and Nate Fisher anchor it in a silly, sometimes melancholy reality. There's the drunken pitcher who revs up his fastball by flapping his arms like a duck, sure. But then there's the older gentleman (Cliff Blake) who appears to have attended every game since the dawn of time, diligently recording each inning's action (or inaction). Whether he does this for posterity, as a hobby, or for something more emotionally poignant is left marvelously up in the air, like a character pop-fly we can choose to catch or let hang in the ether forever.
The sounds. Guys bitching about their knees, the outfielder who shouts "Mother Machree" whether a ball is hurtling his way or not, non-sequiturs from the bullpen and the peanut gallery, all punctuated by the spitting of sunflower seeds and the snap of bubblegum. The cranky batter on a diet getting razzed by the opposing team with jibes of "white alfredo sauce!" and "marinara!" while the pizza truck mockingly pipes in music from a few dozen feet away. "I hate this business," admits the truck chef to his few customers — he might have had a more fulfilling career if he had sold hot dogs and peanuts instead of hoagies. If other things had been different, then Soldier's Field could stick around, freeing these guys to play their game always. That's life.
Lund intersperses these lengthy stretches of joshing, lounging, jogging, and grousing with grace notes: the victorious first (and only) homer of the game shown in slow motion; the scene where the film pauses to explain the unusual slow-ball pitch that gives Eephus its namesake. Then, flourishes of strangeness: the aimless search for a foul ball lost among the trees beyond the diamond; the moment when a fly ball vanishes into the evening gloom. ("Did anyone hear it land?" someone asks. No one answers.)
The film revolves around a small-time game with no pennant to win — the competitive types thin out before the end, too — yet to call Eephus "low-stakes" is to sell it short. Embedded in its deceptively minor melodrama is a theme of personal and communal pride, alongside the acceptance that both will eventually fade, just as the distinctive triangular manhole covers in town are replaced one by one with the usual ho-hum round ones. A scorched-voice pitcher (Uncut Gems' Keith William Richards) claims he'll stick it out for nine innings despite losing his edge throughout the day. He later hops into a car when his family rolls through to pick him up, and his hungry young replacement eagerly takes his spot. Obligation means different things to different people in Eephus. One guy simply wants to make it through the night so he can set off some fireworks.
As the day fades into dusk, and these hometown titans are compelled to drive their cars onto the field to illuminate it with headlamps, an acknowledgment of finality grows. The last time crowding the plate. The last underwhelming win. The final back-pat for a game well played. A lesser filmmaker would squeeze easy, tear-streaked sap from these moments for all they're worth. Lund benches sentimentality to make a statement. It will be a miracle if anyone remembers Adler's Paint and the Riverdogs' last game at Soldier's Field years from now. The fact that it was played at all and that we were allowed to watch it is a miracle in itself.
9 / 10
Eephus is in limited release now. Chicago filmgoers can catch it at The Music Box Theatre, Davis Theatre, and AMC NEWCITY 14.
Directed by Carson Lund.
Written by Michael Basta, Nate Fisher, and Carson Lund.
Cinematography by Greg Tango.
Starring Keith William Richards, Frederick Wiseman, Cliff Blake, Ray Hryb, and Bill "Spaceman" Lee.
Produced by Michael Basta, David Entin, Tyler Taormina, Gabe Klinger, and Michael Richter.
Not rated. Salty language abounds.