Fanny (Cliff Blake) arrives early to Soldiers Field to set up his spot for the day’s baseball game between the Alder’s Paint and the Riverdogs.  Not only is it the last game of the season, but it is the last game that will be played on their field before it is torn down and developed into a new high school. 

Carson Lund directs Eephus from a script he co-wrote with Michael Basta and Nate Fisher.  The loose 98-minute film acts as an ode to those waning summer days, of small-town life, and to the actual Soldiers Field; a real field in Douglas, MA, which served as the shooting location for the film.  Eephus was selected as part of the Director’s Fortnight section at the 2024 edition of the Cannes Film Festival, and made its domestic debut later that year at the New York Film Festival.  Music Box Films gave the film a small – less than 100 screens – theatrical rollout where the film endeared those who took a chance on this micro-budget gem of a hangout film and will hopefully endear itself to a wider audience now that it is available at home. 

Eephus, despite its simple setup, is a real nut to crack because it skirts around the traditional trappings of a sports film, either a comedy or a drama, and models itself more like a mumblecore dramedy than anything else, but even to call it such is reducing the unique niche which the film fills. With a wide ensemble cast, there is no one person that leads the film – though by the very nature of storytelling, a few core characters do rise to the top – but even beyond that, there is no underdog team to root for.  There is the home and away team, and even that delineation gets flipped on its head when after spending much of the opening with the Riverdogs, it is revealed that this is Alder Paint’s field, or perhaps even just their turn to use the field as they talk with the intamite familiarity that they are true friends and neighbors off of the field.  The casual reverence that all of these characters have for each other sets the tone of the film and is the real magic that elevates this beyond what could otherwise have felt like a glorified short film or student project.  Baseball is clearly important to Lund and to the film, but it is not the thrill of or the pursuit of a win that inspired this project; rather, it is a pure love of the game and the people that play it. 

Beyond that, Eephus reads like both an ode to and an indictment of small-town living.  These are friends and neighbors, and even in the heat of the competition, there are questions swapped betwen the players about how the wife is doing?  How are the kids doing in school?  Where will they be spending the holidays?  For some of the younger players in the adult league, how is their college career going? There are offers of an internship. There are weddings to attend.  Jokes to make. Food to eat and beers to drink.  It shows an idyllic slice of life, not with the aspirational white picket fence and manicured lawn, but a warts-and-all examination of the trials and tribulations of everyday people. 

While it all sounds like a very loose affair, and to be clear, it is, there is still some structure in the form of chapters that mark the passing of what seems to be one of the longest baseball games that spans through the afternoon and well into the night.  Cinematographer Greg Tango has his work cut out for him in the absence of the sun, requiring the men to repark their cars and illuminate the field in the glow of their headlights. When the camera pulls wide, it offers a beautiful scene each and every time. Narratively, the aforementioned chapters are accompanied by a quote, read out by Frederick Wiseman in the style of radio announcer Branch Moreland.  This waxing poeticism helps lull us into the laid back and meditative pacing of the film that is, by the very nature of the game, passing by in acts as the pitches turn to runs – or more often, walks – to outs, to innings. 

Drawing deep from the well of Robert Altman in its characterization and Louis Malle in how the film represents an authentic slice of life, Lund’s film captures a moment and looks back on it with rose colored glasses, but notably, this film, despite its loving approach, is hardly romanticized.  In today’s world, the cursory elevator pitch would almost make it sound like Eephus would be more at home under the Angel Studios banner than with Music Box, but never across its runtime do these characters engage with cross generational politics nor does the film ever ring out like a reminder of “what was taken from us.”  Lund is not working from a place of fear; rather, there is a confidence coursing through this work that shrugs off convention yet remains incredibly accessible.  For those in the audience not hip to the vocabulary of the game, Eephus is a style of trick pitch designed to appear slower than it actually is moving as it hurls through the air towards the bewildered batter. A fitting title for the film as life for the men on the field seemingly followed a similar trajectory; slow but fast, leaving them to wonder where all the time has gone, how it was spent, and what to do now that this chapter of their life is coming to a close.