The Legend of Bagger Vance is an allegorical movie about golf but it is not a sports movie in the conventional sense. The film is adapted by director Robert Redford from the novel by Steven Pressfield and is told more in the fashion of a fable about life, the universe and everything. In a nutshell, Bagger Vance tells the tale of Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon), a rising golf star in Savannah, Georgia, who went to World War I and came back with something broken inside. He spends most of the 1920s drinking and playing poker and faces the conflict of finding his “authentic swing”. But he's brought back to life--and finds his lost swing!--by a young fan named Hardy (J. Michael Moncrief), the woman who always loved him, Adele (played by Charlize Theron), a tournament in which he faces the country's best golfers (played by Bruce McGill and Joel Gretsch),
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But Bagger Vance finds the love and pain beneath the game of golf. It does not focus only the outcome of the golf tournament but on the way to achieving it. Throughout the movie, the themes of loss and redemption, finding the purpose we were born for, what one needs to lay down in order to move forward in life and confronting our wounds, are treated with tact by Redford. The camera and audio work unite to fit smoothly into the film’s “golf as life” metaphor. In one scene, caddy Bagger Vance is walking the greens with Hardy and taking measurements. On the green, Bagger has Hardy close his eyes and swing a putter back and forth while he places the ball in front of the putter face at the right moment. The fact that the ball goes straight into the hole is not as memorable as the feeling of the pure pendulum swing and the impact of the eventual “plunk” sound. And then there is Vance’s description of the field equating golf with a spiritual practice. For those who play the game, the movie provides a tonic through its look and
But Bagger Vance finds the love and pain beneath the game of golf. It does not focus only the outcome of the golf tournament but on the way to achieving it. Throughout the movie, the themes of loss and redemption, finding the purpose we were born for, what one needs to lay down in order to move forward in life and confronting our wounds, are treated with tact by Redford. The camera and audio work unite to fit smoothly into the film’s “golf as life” metaphor. In one scene, caddy Bagger Vance is walking the greens with Hardy and taking measurements. On the green, Bagger has Hardy close his eyes and swing a putter back and forth while he places the ball in front of the putter face at the right moment. The fact that the ball goes straight into the hole is not as memorable as the feeling of the pure pendulum swing and the impact of the eventual “plunk” sound. And then there is Vance’s description of the field equating golf with a spiritual practice. For those who play the game, the movie provides a tonic through its look and