Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

McQualude Would you want your dreams to come true, even your nightmares? Based on Leguin's novel of the same name. George Orr discovers that his dreams come true except George isn't dreaming the future, his dreams are changing the past to create the future he dreams. Once George wakens, he is the only person to remember the alternative past, that is until he visits a psychiatrist who realizes the potential of George's dreams and sets out to 'right' the world with fantastic consequences.This film is full of ambiguous metaphor and allegory so that everyone seems to see something a little different. I found the movie a bit overlong but then I can't imagine it being a minute shorter. Because the original print was lost the movie looks pretty crappy with ghosting and graininess, but powerful themes don't need pretty pictures and Lathe of Heaven above all else is cautionary about being unsatisfied and forcing drastic change on the others. Ultimately we learn that despite how bad things are, they could be worse, much worse.The film takes some pretty bizarre twists with aliens that just come out of nowhere, well they come from George's subconscious. Pondering this I am reminded how powerful science fiction really was to the 70's and while most people only remember it for Star Wars and assume that everything else was trying to cash in, the 70's were really a treasure trove of interesting sci-fi and when the UFO subculture really reached it's height. Project Blue Book was published in 1976, Brad Steiger, Stan Friedman and others ignited the public's imagination. Close Encounters and Alien preyed on our hopes and fears respectively; and Star Trek was resurrected from the dead. So all in all it really wasn't that bizarre for George to be thinking about aliens because even though the film is set in 1998, it's very much a product of the 70's.The copy I watched had an interview with the author, Leguin, who declined to interpret the book/movie as she wasn't entirely sure of all the meanings both might hold. What was most interesting was her conclusions about George and Dr. Huber, particularly George whom she sees as a strong man but many others see as something of a weakling.

FloatingOpera7 Lathe Of Heaven..Starring Bruce Davison, Kevin Conway, Peyton Park, Niki Flacks, Vandi Clark, Bernadette Whitehead, Jo Livingston, Jane Roberts, Tom Watts...Director Fred Barzyk...1980 When, in 1980, award-winning sci-fi author Ursula K. Leguin's novel was released as a film, it was the first film broadcast on PBS, the greatest TV channel ever made. As a film, it is stunning, symbolic, allegorical, frightening in its intensity and beautiful in it theme of transience and eternal struggles of good and evil. George Orr, played Bruce Davison who talks and looks somewhat like Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), is a neurotic young man who undertakes involuntary therapy in the future, a world that has survived a great global destruction. His therapist (Kevin Conway) hypnotizes him and uses a machine to tap into his mind as he discovers that his dreams affect present reality. We discover also, that it has been his dreams that has altered human history since the Stone Age all the way to the Armaggedon, nuclear Holocaust that destroyed the world "before April." The therapist, although well-meaning in his quest to vanquish racism, disease, world hunger and all the major problems in the world, only ends up destroying more than he creates. The therapist/doctor has been labeled as the film's villain, which is not what Leguin herself intended. The therapist is good, as all people are innately good. We remember the line when he tells George Orr, "we are going to make the world right." But the elemental forces of nature cannot be controlled by neither God or man, and regardless of our noble intentions, there are dark consequences every time we try do to something to better ourselves. Life, all life, in the past, now and in the future, can only be composed of creative and destructive forces, good and evil, in a yin-yang balance that is eternal and necessary for existence. The interpretation I made the first time I viewed the film was this, although you may interpret any which way you'd like - the individual (George Orr), each of us, man or woman, is an instrument or sum of nature and we are as if part of a bigger dream or series of dreams that is our lifetime, the dreams ending completely when we die. In order to be truly happy, we must always do good, we must be ourselves and not sacrifice neither or individuality nor compassion and humanity- something the doctor seems to have done in a drunken pursuit of power. As for meaning in our life, yes, there is meaning, when we find a religion, belief, career, marriage, love, ANY relationship, and friendship and the meaning of every collective person makes up a beautiful dream, and the dream is over when we die. It was very obvious that the therapist doctor was a parody of religion, or God himself (He tells Orr when he abandons his clinic "You will be back! Without me there is no hope"something no person can do alone in his or her lifetime, and the patient is people altogether. The therapist/patient relationships becomes God/man relationship and the entire meaning of life. This is more profound than even the message in 2001: A Space Odyssey. This voyage into inner space, outer space and everywhere at once, is the most fascinating film ever made about science fiction and the mystery of the universe. I recommend everyone to see this film I urge teachers to read this book to college or high school level students. It's about nothing. It's about everything. It's about what is, what is not and what is to be. Like one of George Orr's dreams.

jhjr243 This movie had me wondering what would happen next. George Orr, a dreamer that could turn dreams into reality(even if he was not at the Lab of Dr. Habber); was the main character in this mysterious scifi TV movie. I watched in 1980(new), and during that time period, you had scifi shows like "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century", "Galatica 1980", "Greatest American Hero", for example. This movie really got to you, because you wondered what George Orr would dream next; and what the Power-seeking Dr. Habber would do if he could develop the power of dreams that George Orr had. In fact, Dr. Habber did try to steal George Orr's mystical dream powers; but enhanced his ability with a machine in his lab. Dr. Habber wanted to control the world and make things in it, the way he wanted them. The movie added the cute, but eerie touch of aliens landing on our moon. The aliens looked like turtles, that stood up on two feet. The movie was filmed in Dallas, Texas, and all the buildings shown, like Reunion Tower for instance, did look futuristic. Movie ends with a battle between George Orr and Dr. Habber. It was a dream, mind against mind battle, with electrical energy discharged by both characters. George Orr defeats Dr. Habber, and decides never again to use his dream powers.

poe426 I remember when this one aired on PBS and the euphoria we the faithful felt at the time. We thought that science fiction had finally really arrived. No more rip-offs of rip-offs of old movie serials: we were finally going to see "real" science fiction on television again (for the first time since the '60's); not the compromise of commercial television but the kind of SF that could only come from Public Television. And what a wonder it was. To see a book like THE LATHE OF HEAVEN, by none other than Ursula K. LeGuin, as fully realized as was humanly possible at that time... yes, it was a wonder to behold. Nor was it going to end there. We were told that wonder would follow on wonder, that an entire series of these thought-provoking programs were in the works. The road ahead looked smooth, the future bright.Sigh. 20/20 hindsight, and all that; but it was a great idea then and it's still a great idea. If not PBS, then some other producing entity. The material is still out there(if you'll pardon the play on words), and the market is arguably stronger than ever. All the genre needs right now is somebody willing to mine all that gold.