Eephus – Belfast Film Festival 2024 Review
I watch an awful lot of films. An unhealthy amount, almost certainly. And do you know one of the most frequent thoughts that has entered my head since I started this obsession, a decade and a half ago?
“Boy, if I could learn how you play baseball (and poker, but that’s of less import here…), there are so many movies I could understand so much better!”
Alas, I’m yet to follow through on this ambition. So you might think that Eephus, a film that completely revolves around the final game on a neighbourhood baseball diamond before it’s bulldozed to make room for a new school, would leave me bewildered. The genius of Carson Lund’s debut however, lies in just how welcoming it is to those of us who have no idea what’s going on – from a sports perspective, anyway.
Eephus starts as all the players appear and start warming up in the morning. It ends long after it has gone dark, as they’ve all gone their separate ways. The biggest name in the cast is legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman, who provides the voice of the DJ on the local radio station that sporadically soundtracks the action. Of the people whose faces we actually see, none are famous, and none emerge as the ‘main character’. It’s about as true an ensemble piece as you can get.
Because there’s not a conventional narrative, and because there is (by design) no stand-out character, you have to watch Eephus a little differently than you do a regular movie. To an extent, you have to let it wash over you. At least as it appears in Lund’s film, baseball is a sport of stops and starts, as the players switch over, and adjudications are made. Lund has no interest in wresting any tension from the competition element – writing this a few days later, I can’t actually remember who wins. Instead, he meanders around from player to onlooker, giving us snatches of conversation, and allowing us to build up a picture of what playing on this soon-to-be-demolished diamond has meant to these men. Whilst a lot of these lines are simply funny, especially in their droll, naturalistic delivery (“It’s a shame those pricks are building a school here”), they add up to paint an endearing, textured portrait of a group who are all feeling a little bit lost.
And it’s that cumulative effect that makes Eephus so surprisingly poignant. Though on a moment-by-moment basis, the film moves so slowly it’s hard to tell it’s moving at all, by the time the light starts to dim, and the players begin to argue as to whether they should finish the game early (“We have a serious problem – no-one can see!”), a quiet air of elegy begins to settle over the diamond.
However much you do or don’t know about baseball, everyone has faced the end of something that has meant a lot to them, and the fear as to what – if anything – will replace it. With a warm, stealthy, moving elegance, Eephus illustrates the preciousness of the communal rituals that make up our lives, and how difficult it can be to say goodbye to them.
★★★★★
