Shell Games Turtle Diary

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Round and round the sea turtles paddle. They have lived in a tank in London's Regent's Park Zoo for 30 years. Considering that sad history, their cramped conditions and their vast life expectancies, it would be easy to see them --especially in a bad movie--as symbols of futility.

Round and round paddles William Snow (Ben Kingsley). He lives in a boardinghouse and works as a bookstore clerk, having dropped out of marriage and more exciting forms of commerce. Asked if he was a good father to his daughters, he replies, "They thought so. Of course, they were very young then."

Round and round paddles Neaera Duncan (Glenda Jackson). She lives in a tiny walk-up and is a blocked children's book writer. She has taken to keeping a solitary water beetle in an aquarium, hoping that it will inspire her.

The sea turtles do not need or get, in this perfect little film, a literary- philosophical interpretation of their lot. The human characters could possibly supply some self-explanations, but they don't bother. William is a perversely perky little man, hesitantly alert. Neaera has a closed ferocity about her, as if she may be contemplating spinsterhood but finds the idea just too commonplace for a woman of truly unfettered mind.

Simultaneously, but independently, they invent the notion of stealing the turtles and setting them free in the ocean. It requires only the intercession of a third party, the creatures' keeper, to bring them together. Thereafter, Turtle Diary casts its spell mainly through its refusals. The heist proceeds without hitch or Hitchcockian suspense. There is not a single sentimental or anthropomorphic word, nor does anyone utter a sound about endangered species or ecological morality. William and Neaera do not fall in love as a result of their shared adventure. Each remobilizes sexually in surprising ways.

Adapting Russell Hoban's novel, Playwright Harold Pinter creates his own kind of suspense by setting up one trite movie situation after another, then making us wonder how he is going to avoid cliche resolutions. It is the same with his characters. They come to life as familiar figures, but they take on what one suspects will be an infinite life in memory because of their awkward singularity. Jackson and Kingsley are great somber comedians under John Irvin's quietly assured, tactfully ironic direction. Amazing how the unspoken can resonate, astonishing how much can be implied with a small, deft gesture. It may be that Turtle Diary is advancing a radical proposition: good can arise as an unintended consequence of self-absorption as readily as it can from more overt efforts to improve the world.

Or maybe not. This is an Ealing comedy for the '80s, omitting the cuddli- ness, the sense of community and the conscious charm of those old movies. But not their straight-faced delight in human eccentricity, their Englishness, if you will.