The Field (Ireland into Film)

John B. Keane's popular play "The Field" (1965), based on a boundary dispute and murder in County Kerry, inspired the 1990 film scripted and directed by Jim Sheridan. Both works address the impact of dislocating social change on agricultural communities while insisting on darker power struggles within traditional life. To Keane's acute portrayal of the mid-century dismantling of rural society, Sheridan adds not only his characteristic attention to the varieties of social injustice spawned by modernization, but also liberal allusions to Irish myth, literature, and cinema. Drawing on fresh interviews, archival research, and new directions in the philosophy of film studies, Cheryl Herr grounds this reading of "The Field" in the conflict between embodied communal practices and the eternal threat of the outsider.