Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

gcsman The world of literature lost one of its finest writers with the death of Ursula Le Guin this year (2017) at the age of 88. She was one of my heroes. Her writing is elegant, humane, wise, and penetrating, and she followed no 'school', no ideology, no fashion. I write for a living too (though it's writing of a very different kind), and what I wouldn't give to be able to write just one page, one paragraph, even one sentence that would live up to her standards.Well, anyway: The Lathe of Heaven is one of her SF novels and probably my favorite among them. It's a singular vision that stands alone in her own work, and in fact I can't think of any other novel to easily compare it with by anything else in SF either. Not all that long after it was written, this movie adaptation was done for original TV broadcast, so it has a low-budget feel to it, and the lead actors (Bruce Davison, Kevin Conway, Margaret Avery) weren't all that well known at the time. It's even in black and white format. But put all that aside: it actually stays pretty close to the Le Guin storyline, unlike the inferior 2002 adaptation that strayed off the path. It's such a great story and so easily translatable to the screen for today's SF-familiar audiences that you can easily imagine a much bigger-budget superb production being done now complete with advanced CGI that would do justice to the hero George Orr's world-changing visions.George Orr (Davison) is a perfectly ordinary, nice, low-key guy except for one thing: when pressed into it, he has "effective dreams" that change reality and rewrite history. He doesn't want to do this, but gets taken advantage of by psychiatrist William Haber (Conway) who uses George to enable his own altruistic but power-hungry goals. George's torturous journey through one history after another and eventual resolution are the substance of the movie.This production disappeared for a long time after its original airing, but finally now you can see it on YouTube. Well worth it. Le Guin's stories haven't generally been served well on movies and TV but so much better could be done with them. The Earthsea fantasy books are on a level with Narnia and Tolkien and they would work brilliantly if well produced. The recent TV production of them turned out to be a travesty. So would others of her SF novels like City of Illusions, Planet of Exile, or The Left Hand of Darkness (well, maybe that last one would be best as an indie film.) Hollywood is missing a bet.

runamokprods Once we understand the trick of the story – the inadvertently evil Dr. Haber's attempt to force 'effective dreamer' George Orr to have dreams that will change the world for the better keeps inevitably backfiring – the film gets repetitive. It's so obvious that Dr. Haber's attempts to change the world through George will fail, that there's not much to be surprised at. Worse, Haber comes off as a fool for not seeing it. Beyond that, there's the 'why not have him just dream that things were back the way they were' possibility that's never explored. There are some striking images (especially for a $250K film!), and memorable, chilling scenes, but it feels overextended, as if the same points could have been made better in a 30 minute 'Twilight Zone' (and, in fact, there was a 'Twilight Zone' with a quite similar 'be careful what you wish for' story). None-the-less, intelligent, well acted and amazingly impressive for its budget.

Hitchcoc As a one time science fiction nut, I always found Ursula K. LeGuin to be one of the most challenging writers in her genre. For me, she hung over the mainstream. This is a nice film that doesn't touch the book, but it has fine performances and a reasonable plot within the constraints that are time travel. A psychiatrist takes advantage of a man whose dreams come to realization, trying to manipulate him for his own purposes. He never grasps the idea that dreams are often surreal and uncontrollable. After Forbidden Planet, I know that allowing the baser things to come to the fore can be disastrous. The problem with the whole topic always gets back to the immutability of time. Traveling forward doesn't seem to have issues; back creates, of course, the butterfly effect and makes for unpredictability. This goes to the mat and is reasonably satisfying, though it is full of holes that could easily render it incomprehensible.

MartinHafer This film was the first film contracted by PBS and it really shows, as the movie had a minuscule budget. If you adjust for inflation, the film literally cost about as much as an Ed Wood, Jr. film to make! At times this shows, such as some liberal use of stock footage, minimalistic sets and negligible special effects---yet, oddly enough, the film is a pretty good sci-fi film. And when I say SCI-FI, I mean very deep and cerebral sci-fi. If you are looking for Darth Vader and cute little androids, this film is not for you--instead, it's set in the very near future and concerns a simple man with an incredible talent. Bruce Davison dreams and what occurs in the dreams actually become reality--as if everything we know to exist is totally dependent on his thoughts. If he dreams, for example, that you no longer exist, then you never really did! Because of his unique problem, Bruce consults with a scientist adept at working on dreams. However, each time this scientist tries to use the dreams to effect positive world change, the dream somehow backfires. A good example--when he wanted his patient to end overpopulation, a plague broke out and wiped out most of the inhabitants! Again and again, these attempts only make things worse.The film is an interesting blend of philosophy, existentialism and sci-fi. While it won't appeal to everyone, I at least appreciated how unique it was and how those involved tried to make something different. A noble effort that sometimes succeeds and often time fails--mostly due to a low budget. I wonder what this MIGHT have been like with a bit more money to make the aliens and some of the other plot devices not to incredibly cheesy.