It Owns Him...It Possesses Him...And It Could Even Destroy Him
Overview
"Bull" McCabe's family has farmed a field for generations, sacrificing much in the name of the land. When the widow who owns the field decides to sell it in a public auction, McCabe knows that he must own it. While no local dare bid against him, a wealthy American decides he requires the field to build a highway. "Bull" and his son decide they must try to convince the American to let go of his ambition and return home, but the consequences of their plot prove sinister.
Ratings
Curator score: 6.0/10
IMDb: 7.3/10
Letterboxd: 3.72/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 43%
TMDB: 7.0/10
Director
Jim Sheridan
Production
Sovereign Pictures, Granada Television, Noel Pearson
Cast
Richard Harris, John Hurt, Sean Bean, Frances Tomelty, Brenda Fricker, Ruth McCabe, Brendan Gleeson, Tom Berenger, Sean McGinley, Jer O'Leary, Noel O'Donovan, John Cowley, Ronan Wilmot, Jenny Conroy, Joan Sheehy, Malachy McCourt, Eamon Keane, Sara Jane Scaife, David Wilmot, Rachael Dowling
Curator Review
Verdict
A fierce, old-world tragedy about land, pride, and inheritance, driven by Richard Harris’s towering performance. It’s slow-burn and grim, but the emotional and moral force is unmistakable.
Best for
viewers drawn to rural tragedies and feuding families
fans of intense character studies and stage-to-screen drama
people interested in Irish cinema and land-rights themes
audiences who like bleak, Shakespearean power struggles
Skip if
you want a fast-moving plot
you prefer lighter or more hopeful dramas
you dislike heavily theatrical dialogue and grim endings
you need a broad, accessible crowd-pleaser
Overview
The Field is a severe, elemental drama that treats land not as property but as blood memory, inheritance, and curse. Jim Sheridan stages the story with a tragic patience, letting the weight of years settle into every glance, silence, and threat. What begins as a dispute over an auction becomes something older and darker: a portrait of a man who has built his identity so completely around possession that he can no longer imagine life without it.
Worth noting
Richard Harris gives the film its thunder. His Bull McCabe is monstrous, magnetic, and pitiable all at once, a patriarch whose devotion to the field curdles into obsession. John Hurt and Sean Bean are strong foils, but the film belongs to Harris, whose performance has the scale of a folk legend and the intimacy of a family wound. The result is less a conventional drama than a rural tragedy, with the landscape itself seeming to judge the people who fight over it.
Bottom line
It can feel austere and stage-bound, and its rhythms are deliberately severe, but that formality suits the material. The Field is about inheritance in every sense: land passed down, violence passed down, silence passed down. If you respond to films that turn local conflict into something mythic and devastating, this is a powerful one.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Sam (3.5★) · 145 likes
This is what Ireland does to people.
FakeVoorhees (4.5★) · 86 likes
Between The Banshees of Inisherin, How Harry Became a Tree and The Field, I am loving these movies about personal feuds in rural Ireland in the early 1900s. That may be oddly specific but does anyone know of any others I should check out?
Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 (4★) · 80 likes
Richard Harris effectively gives us his Lear as Irish farmer Bull McCabe in this superb film from My Left Foot director Jim Sheridan. It's arguably one of the finest performances that Harris ever committed to celluloid and he was rightly nominated for an Oscar in 1991. He lost out to Jeremy Irons for Reversal of Fortune. I haven't seen that film, but in my view Irons must have been exceptional to steal the Oscar from Harris.
A footnote; there is… more
egg shrimp (3★) · 66 likes
*in full daylight*
sean bean: the sun is coming up
Ziglet_mir (2.5★) · 62 likes
This week on The Searchers film podcast we raise a glass to the Green with the 1990 film, The Field, directed by Jimmy Sheridan. We celebrate the Irish so hard I actually lost my voice for two days! Hear Ben, Kevin and I discuss films adapted as plays as well as the Irish culture in cinema (of what little we know). Also, we respond to our very first mailbag!!!!
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The Field is the crossroads of two obvious things working… more