Excellent story
Added 8/16/2009
One of my favorit all time movies. It rates up there with ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. The ending is a little confusing and even the writer was not sure what the ending meant but it is fun to discuss with your friends and try to figure out.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Thoughtful cautionary tale
Added 7/23/2009
Ursula K. LeGuin is among the most literary of SF writers. Her stories center on human strengths, faults, and dilemmas. Fantasy elements in her story just highlight these traits, never becoming the story in themselves.
This adaptation of her famous novel presents George Orr, a normal enough guy convicted of some minor drug infraction. When he shows up for court-ordered therapy, the reason for the drugs comes out: he takes them to sleep without dreaming. His dreams terrify him, not as nightmares would, but only after he awakens. Those bizarre images from dreamworld logic turn out to have changed the real world in their image - and changed them so completely that all of human history changes, too, in ways that let George's new world make sense. Only George remembers the old world as well as the new.
Dr. Haber takes on George's case and quickly discovers the truth of George's power. I'm sure everyone agrees, there's plenty in this world that could be improved. Haber sees it his god-given duty to make those improvements, using technological control over George's dreaming mind. A classic story of scientific hubris follows, with blind disregard for many warnings signs along the way. One can almost imagine George and Haber as two discoverers of fire: the one seeking only a way to put it out, the other determined to set the world abalze.
This 1980 movie was probably put together in the late 70s. It carries many marks of that time, including some Logan's Run visual styling, bell-bottoms, and Brutalist architecture. I doubt mere coincidence in the close fit between the Brutalist research institute that Haber creates for himself and his brutal approach to George and to the world in general. This modest movie succeeds well, despite minimal effects and total lack of guns'n'chases action. Perhaps it lacks the delicacy of LeGuin's original, but offers plenty to the thinking viewer.
-- wiredweird
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Incoherent and dated and smells of made-for-tv
Added 1/1/2009
There's a reason all the studio masters were lost and this movie sunk into obscurity. It was made for TV (in the classic sense of made-for-TV, which means the producers have low expectations for quality and coherence), and it was quite correctly chucked in the trash after one or two broadcasts (remember "broadcasting"? You flick on the telly, maybe something is on, maybe it isn't, then it's all over - - the show is disposable - - if you miss it, it's never coming back, and probably just as well. There's more meaningless junk on today anyway.)
Along comes [...] and fishes around in the trash, hoping to revive the Visionary Cult Classic that everyone overlooked, a heady mix of 2001, Twilight Zone, and The Day The Earth Stood Still, a prescient script that informs decades to come and that Real Movie Aficionados recognize as seminal. Sorry. This isn't it. There's a few dream sequences, a few modifying-the-past-time-travel type paradoxes, a megalomaniac, and -- oddly, out of the blue -- a bunch of stuffy aliens in turtle suits. The plot climax substitutes vintage special effects for actual coherence. Then it - - well - - just ends, without really making much sense.
0 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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a movie from my memory
Added 11/24/2008
I remembered this movie from when it was on TV and have looked for it since. The quality of the movie is weak, poor lighting not much spent on props or special effects. It looks more like a play on stage being recorded. The story line however and much of the acting carries the poor cinematography. I am glad to add it to my sci fi collection.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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I loved this movie...even at age 11
Added 7/8/2008
I watched this movie on PBS when I was 11 years old. I'm 40 now and believe me this movie has stuck around my memory since then.
I dont even truly think then I understood what the backstory of the movie was about but it was one of my first forays into Science Fiction and I do know that i watched it several times when it aired and still loved it. That and Doctor Who:) I love you PBS:)
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Excellent story
Added 8/16/2009
One of my favorit all time movies. It rates up there with ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. The ending is a little confusing and even the writer was not sure what the ending meant but it is fun to discuss with your friends and try to figure out.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Thoughtful cautionary tale
Added 7/23/2009
Ursula K. LeGuin is among the most literary of SF writers. Her stories center on human strengths, faults, and dilemmas. Fantasy elements in her story just highlight these traits, never becoming the story in themselves.
This adaptation of her famous novel presents George Orr, a normal enough guy convicted of some minor drug infraction. When he shows up for court-ordered therapy, the reason for the drugs comes out: he takes them to sleep without dreaming. His dreams terrify him, not as nightmares would, but only after he awakens. Those bizarre images from dreamworld logic turn out to have changed the real world in their image - and changed them so completely that all of human history changes, too, in ways that let George's new world make sense. Only George remembers the old world as well as the new.
Dr. Haber takes on George's case and quickly discovers the truth of George's power. I'm sure everyone agrees, there's plenty in this world that could be improved. Haber sees it his god-given duty to make those improvements, using technological control over George's dreaming mind. A classic story of scientific hubris follows, with blind disregard for many warnings signs along the way. One can almost imagine George and Haber as two discoverers of fire: the one seeking only a way to put it out, the other determined to set the world abalze.
This 1980 movie was probably put together in the late 70s. It carries many marks of that time, including some Logan's Run visual styling, bell-bottoms, and Brutalist architecture. I doubt mere coincidence in the close fit between the Brutalist research institute that Haber creates for himself and his brutal approach to George and to the world in general. This modest movie succeeds well, despite minimal effects and total lack of guns'n'chases action. Perhaps it lacks the delicacy of LeGuin's original, but offers plenty to the thinking viewer.
-- wiredweird
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Incoherent and dated and smells of made-for-tv
Added 1/1/2009
There's a reason all the studio masters were lost and this movie sunk into obscurity. It was made for TV (in the classic sense of made-for-TV, which means the producers have low expectations for quality and coherence), and it was quite correctly chucked in the trash after one or two broadcasts (remember "broadcasting"? You flick on the telly, maybe something is on, maybe it isn't, then it's all over - - the show is disposable - - if you miss it, it's never coming back, and probably just as well. There's more meaningless junk on today anyway.)
Along comes [...] and fishes around in the trash, hoping to revive the Visionary Cult Classic that everyone overlooked, a heady mix of 2001, Twilight Zone, and The Day The Earth Stood Still, a prescient script that informs decades to come and that Real Movie Aficionados recognize as seminal. Sorry. This isn't it. There's a few dream sequences, a few modifying-the-past-time-travel type paradoxes, a megalomaniac, and -- oddly, out of the blue -- a bunch of stuffy aliens in turtle suits. The plot climax substitutes vintage special effects for actual coherence. Then it - - well - - just ends, without really making much sense.
0 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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