THE FIELD

It was while shooting My Left Foot that director Jim Sheridan re-read a play called "The Field". Ray McAnally, the actor who portrayed Christy Brown's father, had once played the lead role on stage and was eager for an opportunity to bring it to the screen. Sadly, when Sheridan and producer Noel Pearson finally committed to make the film, McAnally had died.

Luckily veteran actor Richard Harris was available for the role and The Field became a reality. Depicting the tragedy that befalls an Irish tenant farmer confronted with the loss of his land, this is a drama that raises universal questions of morality without compromising the human reality of its characters.

Harris (in the role that earned him a Best Actor nomination at this year's Academy Awards) is The Bull, a farmer whose family has worked the same rented field for years. When the land is put up for auction, an American (Tom Berenger) bids against The Bull. In the classic clash between the native and the outsider, a bitterness sweeps the landscape like a fog, setting in motion a chain of events which is sudden, violent and inevitable. Other protagonists in this starkly beautiful, almost paganly powerful tale include John Hurt, remarkable as a village simpleton, Sean Bean as Bull's stolidly moody son and Brenda Fricker (from Sheridan's My Left Foot) as Bull's silently resentful wife.

With the concept of birthright central to the theme The Field is as much a story of Ireland and her people as it is the story of The Bull. "We set the film in the thirties" says Sheridan "because it's hard to do a a tragedy in the modern world where there is little belief or faith. i decided to set it in the past so it could actually be about the present. "