Not many movies bring men to tears. In fact there are only two films that I can think of that make me cry every time I watch them. One is Shawshank Redemption and the other is Field of Dreams. Both stories relate to men in a way that no other film does. Both stories, in very distinct ways, touch the base of all masculine emotion. They both address and explore the ideas of camaraderie and brotherly love (the love that exists between a father and his son in Field of Dreams). The idea of hope and dreams is ever present throughout both films. The protagonist in Shawshank, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) consistently shows hope in the face of grave and desperate situations. He experiences a wrongful conviction, death of friends by suicide, death of friends by corruption and is still able to find the redeeming aspects of life, in spite of the fact that he is in prison. This may be a stretch but I would compare Dufresne’s undying spirit to that of Anne Frank. She said that “in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” This is the way in which Andy leads his life and it pays off in the end. Field of Dreams is the definitive film for all men. Two key components make it so: baseball and the heartfelt, father-son bond. W.P. Kinsella, the author of the novel, greatly uses baseball as a metaphor for life. We start at home with all our adrenaline and energy pumping. We wait for the right time to strike and when our chance comes, we are willing and able to run straight down the line to our goals. As time goes by and as we continue on our journey to that goal we become tired, worn out; we even question what our next move should be. Finally as we get ready to turn into our final stage we realize that our goal is to return to where our journey started, this time aged, learned, and wise. When we finally get home we find that everything we were ever looking for was there all along. Field of Dreams makes this metaphor special by concluding the film with a calming crescendo ending with a catch between Ray (Kevin Costner) and his father John (Dwier Brown). This is something every man can associate with, even if he never experienced it and that familiarity and that “close-to-home” feel to this scene pull the tears from our eyes so fast that we don’t have time to make an excuse for why our eyes are watering.