tolerford-1 What's it been...39 years. But having the CD brings it all back, and I played it four times this afternoon. The funny thing is I've never liked Neil Diamond. This work in my book is the one thing he's done worthy of the awards for it. Awful conceit about the man. When it came out, I raced after work to catch the early showing, and could hardly stand afterward for how completely moved I was. I knew it would go over like a lead balloon, and it did. It was gone in no time. But boy for us writers and lovers of music. If you have the least smidgen of philosophical spirituality, you will adore the movie, the book and the music. If you have mature children, preteens or teens with high ambition, they'll hug you for it, especially cut #7, Anthem, on the CD. The album back when had voluminous notes of how Diamond went to Hawaii and mulled months over how to best do the book justice. It was nominated or won for cinematography and editing, so you know already it was gorgeous. It brings tears of joy.

Ali Catterall 1973: Martha, a Californian housewife in her early thirties is married to Peter, CEO of a construction company. When flower power was in full bloom Martha and Peter concentrated on building a home and putting their daughters through private education. With Peter increasingly away on business, a restless Martha begins to feel there's something missing from her life; might those hippies have been onto something? One day, her old schoolfriend Susan drops by for coffee, clutching a copy of Kahil Gibran's 'The Prophet' and 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull', the latest publishing phenomenon."Why don't you take a swim in lake you?" smiles Susan, and leaves the books for Martha to ponder over. Days pass, until out of curiosity, Martha picks up the little blue book with the outline of a seagull on the cover. This Richard Bach fellow's topped the 'New York Times' bestseller lists for 38 weeks - a respectable writer. They've even made a movie of it. And Martha has always enjoyed nature documentaries. Whatever would Peter say? Oh phooey - for the first time in her 27 years, Martha is spreading her wings...Dedicated to "the real Jonathan Livingston Seagull who lives within us all", this is an allegory for living one's life without fear, to "fly for the fun of it" and "learn what perfection really is". It's 'The Little Engine That Could' with feathers. Or Herman Hesse with a mouthful of herring.Although the story was inspired by John H Livingston, a top American pilot of the 1920s and 1930s, Richard Bach (a new age forerunner to the likes of Deepak Chopra and Paulo Coelho) has denied he is the real author of the novel, merely acting as a conduit for some higher power; fortunately, there's not yet a legal precedent for robbing superior beings of their royalty cheques.Whoever the writer, one cannot underestimate the impact the book had on the 'Me' generation, with its hodge-podge of Eastern philosophy and self-empowerment speak, later ridiculed by writer Beverley Byrne as "Horatio Alger doing Antoine De Saint-Exupéry" or "the Qur'an as translated by Bob Dylan".Composed of fewer than 10,000 words, it broke all hardcover sales records (in fiction - and, tellingly, non-fiction) since 'Gone With The Wind', shifting more than a million copies in 1972 alone. 'Reader's Digest' published an abridged version, and Richard Harris won a Grammy in 1973 for his spoken-word album-of-the-book. Naturally, given its earning power, studio execs were inclined to jump all over it.Shot in California (where else) and New Mexico for $1.5 million, and sporting a soundtrack by Neil Diamond, the film version concerns the education of the eponymous seagull, voiced by James Franciscus. Driven by a desire for limitless flight ("There's got to be more to life than fighting for fish heads!") and an embarrassment to his parents and his girlfriend, he is banished by the elder of his flock for flaunting the proscribed rules of speed and altitude.He encounters two other outcasts who teach him to soar to a higher plane of existence, where dwell a flock of enlightened gulls, led by a wise old bird named Chiang who takes him under his wing. Under Chiang's tutelage Jonathan learns how to instantly 'jaunt' to anywhere in the universe. The secret is to "begin by knowing that you have already arrived". As Chiang explains, "Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip is nothing more than your thought itself. Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body too." Equipped with his teacher's parting words, "keep working on love", and with the knowledge that the soul can only be free through the ability to forgive and to pass on such wisdom, the beaky Messiah flies back to his flock to spread the word ("Listen, everybody! There's no limit to how high we can fly! We can dive for fish and never have to live on garbage again!") amassing supporters, until he flaps off again to God knows where.As successful as Bach's novel was and is, the movie was a troubled production, which plummeted from the screen a few weeks after release in the face of almost uniformly terrible reviews. The serenely spiritual Bach ended up launching a suit against the producer (who initially wanted to graft Disney-style animated mouths on the seagulls) for not sticking to the letter of his book, and remains a non-fan of the film version.Trouble is, given the sheer volume of philosophising at the expense of narrative, the decision to render everything in disembodied voice-over can become tiresome, and one's appreciation of the film may be fundamentally dictated by how many new age platitudes you can ingest without discomfort (or indeed giggling - "We don't go flying through rock till a little later in the programme"); similarly, how much sub-standard Neil Diamond you can take without feeling the urge to drive pencils deep into your ears.With a melody invoking Elgar's 'Nimrod', and lyrics like "Lost on a painted sky, where the clouds are hung for the poet's eye", Diamond's overwrought title song 'Be' (which on release barely tickled the Top 40) recalls nothing so much as Engelbert Humperdinck's 'Lesbian Seagull' from Beavis And Butt-Head Do America.Diamond, who also launched a suit against the producer, nevertheless saw his soundtrack album go double-platinum; the likes of 'Be' and 'Songbird' ("Seek out your harbour of light!") faring slightly better out of context. On the plus side, the movie's nature photography is sublime - the knowledge that the film employed various radio-controlled gliders (built by one Mark Smith of Escondido, California) standing in for the gulls, in no way detracting from the superb aerobatics on show.Cynicism aside, there's also some pretty sound advice here - why shouldn't we attempt to "fly without limits", or strive to be the greatest seagulls we can possibly be? It's better than a face-full of rotten fish. Keep your beak up.

MartinHafer JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL is a film about a bird and his philosophical musings. As he flies about, he wonders if there's more to life than just eating fish heads, how high he can fly and is there some special purpose to life--all in a live-action two-hour film! Yes, this is #253 of why you should hate the 1970s--right between the song "Muskrat Love" and Richard Nixon! Okay, there really is no such list--but if there was, this film would be on it! That's because this is a god-awful film that was actually embraced by "with it" people and made the book a huge best-seller and the film a must-see. And to make it worse, the film is so deadly serious and tries so hard to be philosophical--while all it really consists of is a seagull flying about as inane dialog blares on the screen. Could this get any worse?! Well, yes, because while the music does sound lovely, Neil Diamond also sings several songs that made "Heartlight" (sure to be included if there was a "reasons to hate the 1980s" list) seem hard-edged! So what positive things do I have to say about the film? Well, the cinematography is lovely and must have been spectacular on the big screen. Also, when Neil Diamond isn't singing, the music is lovely. However, with two hours to the film, these reasons become irrelevant after just a few minutes as the rest is just a ponderous pile of....well,... guano. And the fact that so many once-respected actors LOVED the project and agreed to do voices for it is a testament to the power of mood altering drugs and hippie psychology!! Harry Medved included this in his book "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time". While I have disagreed with some of his choices, I can heartily agree that this film merited, no DEMANDED, inclusion! In summation, I'd rather eat glass than see it again! It's THAT bad!!!

filmfrik I watched this movie at the cinema theater in 1975 or 1976. I loved it! Then i rented it on VHS back in the 80's, and thought it was one of the best films i'd ever seen. Now, i was so lucky to find it on DVD, with Norwegian subtitles (Not that they're really needed here, though). This is clearly a very different film. Very quiet and beautiful, and with Neil Diamonds beautiful songs, that match perfectly. If a film intends to mean anything, the audience needs time to think. In todays modern, fast, loud movies, you hardly get time to breath, lot less to stop and think. With this movie, however, you get plenty of time. And the quiet, beautiful scenes are a part of the message delivered: Take your time, live your life to the full, don't be afraid to try what hasn't been tried before, don't hesitate, and don't stress. And first and last: Don't just accept other people's "thruths". Go find out for yourself. If it works for you, it works! I rated this film 10/10, because it's not only a very good film, it's unique! There has never been another movie quite like it, and probably never will be. This is a brilliant masterpiece of a film.