Bird Droppings

By J.C.

JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL

Directed by HALL BARTLETT

Screenplay by RICHARD BACH

and HALL BARTLETT

If one must spend the better part of two hours following the adventures of a bird, far better that the hero be Daffy Duck than Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Jonathan, for the information of any recluses who might not have heard or misanthropes who just don't care, is an adventurous seagull who wants to "fly where no seagull has flown before," to "know what there is to know of this life." This angers his flock. An outraged Elder announces, "You are henceforth and forever outcast!", and Jonathan takes it on the wing.

He seems to fly into a series of picture postcards of Yosemite, of Death Valley, of the frozen North. Eventually, settling down in the snow, he expires, his tail feathers quaking as he gives up the ghost. The ghost, however, will not be given up so easily and flies off to some spiritual never-never land. There, it--or he--is instructed in higher wisdom by a bird called Chiang, whose lessons in life and philosophy and heightened consciousness take a hint from Dale Carnegie, a leaf from Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and a volume from Kahlil Gibran. Thus enlightened, Jonathan is apparently reborn. He returns to his flock and spreads the good word in a sort of Sermon on the Garbage Mount: "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!"

Not that he actually talks, of course. Jonathan and the rest of his feathered friends are real birds--not mechanical, not animated--but their voices and interior monologues are rendered by actors. James Franciscus speaks for Jonathan, Juliet Mills for his love interest, Hal Holbrook for the Elder, Richard Crenna and Dorothy McGuire for Jonathan's parents. None of these actors has chosen to be included in the film's credits, a privilege only the least charitable would question.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is the warmest, most goodhearted, most tuneful (score by Neil Diamond) piece of moral uplift since the musical version of Lost Horizon. Years hence, scholars may debate the significance of the fact that the wise elder in Shangri-La and the wise bird here are both called Chiang. Surely it is no mere coincidence. A homage, perhaps. Or maybe a moment of mystic communion, a stroke of magic enlightenment of the sort that Jonathan is always shoving his beak into.

Richard Bach, who wrote the original book, is much agitated over this film version, which has allegedly altered many of the "ideas" in the book and his original screenplay. The book has about as many ideas as The Little Engine That Could; in fact, buried under all the vomitous theosophy, it has the same idea. Ideology aside, the movie's casting could open up a whole new style of film making. Think of it: Pigeons on Mean Streets, about a bunch of tough young New York birds. Or what about a remake of Four Feathers?

J.C.

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