What makes it different from others?

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

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

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I was 6 and completely understood the movie from my heart. I cried at the life that was to be lived. That had touched my soul. Richard Bach has written wonderful books and I am grateful to have read them all. The movie is at a deeper level of just seagulls flying. Society is in all forms on this planet all having some form of struggle. At 6 yrs old reality had already touched my heart. I still have the book. I need to see the movie again. May compassion always be recognized and shared freely. hope this is enough lines to post well not sure what more to say I know I am not at 1000 words. To me I am grateful it was my 1st movie in a movie theater in 1973.

I have never heard of the book nor this movie - until I was browsing in the local library and came across the DVD. Because of my devoted love and connection I have with Marine Life, The Sea and Animals in general, I thought that this was a 'feel good documentary' on seagulls.....HOW WRONG WAS I! Although this movie is metaphorically depicting 'human destructive and 'sheep-like nature' behavior, stepping outside oneself, becoming 'awakened within' becoming 'spiritually awakened' about 'the test and why we are here' to better ourselves and become at one with enlightenment; I felt nothing but heart-break. I cried and cried right throughout the whole movie. Not because 'I get it-the meaning of it' (I got it years ago) but because of the absolute disgusting deliberate animal cruelty right from the very beginning to the very end of the movie. HOW COULD SOMEONE DO SUCH A THING? IRONIC isn't it!!!! Reflective, the movie-makers of this film did exactly that! Just what humans should rise against...CRUELTY AND CONTROL! I hope I am incorrect. I hope someone out there can show me that 'every scene' in this movie where the seagulls shown were injured, dying, dead, frightened, confused, breathless, enduring unfamiliar terrain and weather extremities, battered and lifeless, and in dire straits of urgent veterinary medical attention was all fake!!! I will be contacting Ray Berwick and Gary Gero-Jim Callahan The Bird Trainers for the film AND Matthew Place The Bird Care Supervisor to see what results I get from them.The main Seagull Animal Cruelty Scenes I am concerned about are: 1) Opening scene: Fishing Trawler offloads fish-waste scrapes 'for the birds' enticing them to squabble and fight for the food. Look closely there are 2 different species of birds - 1 silvergull (seagull) and 1 brown bird with a hook eagle-like beak; and it was this bird that kept stabbing the defenceless silvergull in the head, with blood spurting out-very graphic indeed, and then proceeded to grab and shake the silvergulls beak, either breaking the silvergulls neck or shaking it to death...this is not natural behavior of these 2 species of birds together.2)Deliberately taking a silvergull out of its 'natural habitat' and forcing it to fly unnatural sky's: 3)The Dessert where HAWKS fly - The seagull was 'set upon and attacked' by a Hawk! 4)The Snow icy extremities - Showed shivering, alone, confused, lost and afraid! 5)Falling out of sky hitting the ocean knocking silvergull unconscious - showed the silvergull hitting the ocean so hard it split the silvergull's head including underwater scene where bird 'fought so hard' to bring itself back into consciousness but clearly under severe distress and injury. Filmmakers put drift crate (wood) to float past in order for the silvergull to 'with all its might-left resources' struggling to pull itself on top of crate, bleeding from head, feathers completely saturated and clearly battered and bruised; the silvergull's head was clearly uncoordinated wobbling from side to side, trying to keep it's head above the water from drowning. THE SILVERGULL WAS IN URGENT NEED OF VETERINARY ATTENTION.6)Rubbish Tip Scene - one seagull had an obvious injured leg and right wing...then suddenly on a different 'edit cut' did not and could walk and fly uninjured...7)Fletcher Colliding into the Cliff Face - I SCREAMED IN THIS SCENE...The filmmakers 'slowly filmed' the silvergulls' unintended death and smashing his head, wings and legs to death, tumbling down the cliff face...HOW COULD YOU????? If this scene is real the filmmakers involved should have been prosecuted and held accountable for every scene where 'all the seagulls' were injured, mistreated and killed by the highest legislation of Animal Cruelty.OTHER QUESTIONS STILL REMAIN UNANSWERED: 1) Why did 'Jonathan' Seagull suddenly disappear one third way through the film...suddenly 'Jonathan' (black and white silvergull)is replaced with a different seagull...white body and orange brown wings. The NEW Jonathan is DISTINCTIVELY DIFFERENT SILVERGULL. What happened to 'Jonathan'? 2) Why was Jonathan on his own MAJORITY of the time? The DESSERT SCENE was disturbing and very upsetting as the silvergull was LEFT just standing on its own in unfamiliar terrain, no water, no food and no shelter AND subjected as an easy target for predators:snakes, hawks, reptiles, spiders, etc...THIS IS ANIMAL ABUSE! The helicopter slowly moved away showing the silvergull ALONE AND AFRAID! IF ANYBODY CAN ANSWER MY QUESTIONS ACCORDINGLY I'D APPRECIATE IT. I AM HOWEVER AM CONTACTING THE BIRD TRAINERS OF THIS FILM TO FIND OUT THE ANSWERS TO WHICH MYSELF AND OTHER CONCERNED VIEWERS ARE DEMANDING ANSWERS FOR THE MAKING OF THIS PROVOKATIVE FILM.

1973: Martha, a Californian housewife in her early thirties is married to Peter, CEO of a construction company. When flower power was in full bloom Martha and Peter concentrated on building a home and putting their daughters through private education. With Peter increasingly away on business, a restless Martha begins to feel there's something missing from her life; might those hippies have been onto something? One day, her old schoolfriend Susan drops by for coffee, clutching a copy of Kahil Gibran's 'The Prophet' and 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull', the latest publishing phenomenon."Why don't you take a swim in lake you?" smiles Susan, and leaves the books for Martha to ponder over. Days pass, until out of curiosity, Martha picks up the little blue book with the outline of a seagull on the cover. This Richard Bach fellow's topped the 'New York Times' bestseller lists for 38 weeks - a respectable writer. They've even made a movie of it. And Martha has always enjoyed nature documentaries. Whatever would Peter say? Oh phooey - for the first time in her 27 years, Martha is spreading her wings...Dedicated to "the real Jonathan Livingston Seagull who lives within us all", this is an allegory for living one's life without fear, to "fly for the fun of it" and "learn what perfection really is". It's 'The Little Engine That Could' with feathers. Or Herman Hesse with a mouthful of herring.Although the story was inspired by John H Livingston, a top American pilot of the 1920s and 1930s, Richard Bach (a new age forerunner to the likes of Deepak Chopra and Paulo Coelho) has denied he is the real author of the novel, merely acting as a conduit for some higher power; fortunately, there's not yet a legal precedent for robbing superior beings of their royalty cheques.Whoever the writer, one cannot underestimate the impact the book had on the 'Me' generation, with its hodge-podge of Eastern philosophy and self-empowerment speak, later ridiculed by writer Beverley Byrne as "Horatio Alger doing Antoine De Saint-Exupéry" or "the Qur'an as translated by Bob Dylan".Composed of fewer than 10,000 words, it broke all hardcover sales records (in fiction - and, tellingly, non-fiction) since 'Gone With The Wind', shifting more than a million copies in 1972 alone. 'Reader's Digest' published an abridged version, and Richard Harris won a Grammy in 1973 for his spoken-word album-of-the-book. Naturally, given its earning power, studio execs were inclined to jump all over it.Shot in California (where else) and New Mexico for $1.5 million, and sporting a soundtrack by Neil Diamond, the film version concerns the education of the eponymous seagull, voiced by James Franciscus. Driven by a desire for limitless flight ("There's got to be more to life than fighting for fish heads!") and an embarrassment to his parents and his girlfriend, he is banished by the elder of his flock for flaunting the proscribed rules of speed and altitude.He encounters two other outcasts who teach him to soar to a higher plane of existence, where dwell a flock of enlightened gulls, led by a wise old bird named Chiang who takes him under his wing. Under Chiang's tutelage Jonathan learns how to instantly 'jaunt' to anywhere in the universe. The secret is to "begin by knowing that you have already arrived". As Chiang explains, "Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip is nothing more than your thought itself. Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body too." Equipped with his teacher's parting words, "keep working on love", and with the knowledge that the soul can only be free through the ability to forgive and to pass on such wisdom, the beaky Messiah flies back to his flock to spread the word ("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!") amassing supporters, until he flaps off again to God knows where.As successful as Bach's novel was and is, the movie was a troubled production, which plummeted from the screen a few weeks after release in the face of almost uniformly terrible reviews. The serenely spiritual Bach ended up launching a suit against the producer (who initially wanted to graft Disney-style animated mouths on the seagulls) for not sticking to the letter of his book, and remains a non-fan of the film version.Trouble is, given the sheer volume of philosophising at the expense of narrative, the decision to render everything in disembodied voice-over can become tiresome, and one's appreciation of the film may be fundamentally dictated by how many new age platitudes you can ingest without discomfort (or indeed giggling - "We don't go flying through rock till a little later in the programme"); similarly, how much sub-standard Neil Diamond you can take without feeling the urge to drive pencils deep into your ears.With a melody invoking Elgar's 'Nimrod', and lyrics like "Lost on a painted sky, where the clouds are hung for the poet's eye", Diamond's overwrought title song 'Be' (which on release barely tickled the Top 40) recalls nothing so much as Engelbert Humperdinck's 'Lesbian Seagull' from Beavis And Butt-Head Do America.Diamond, who also launched a suit against the producer, nevertheless saw his soundtrack album go double-platinum; the likes of 'Be' and 'Songbird' ("Seek out your harbour of light!") faring slightly better out of context. On the plus side, the movie's nature photography is sublime - the knowledge that the film employed various radio-controlled gliders (built by one Mark Smith of Escondido, California) standing in for the gulls, in no way detracting from the superb aerobatics on show.Cynicism aside, there's also some pretty sound advice here - why shouldn't we attempt to "fly without limits", or strive to be the greatest seagulls we can possibly be? It's better than a face-full of rotten fish. Keep your beak up.

The cinematography is truly amazing. The plot though, not so much. My husband commented that it was on his top 5 of most boring movies. The movie dragged along in several sections, and I would have chosen any one but Mr Franciscus to be the voice of Jonathan. He was a bit over the top and seemed to be trying much too hard to be a seagull. The music is wonderful, but I may be biased as I have been a Neil Diamond fan since the mid 60's, and have several copies of the the JLS soundtrack. The book is great, the music is great, so my suggestion would be to buy the soundtrack from Mr. Diamond and read the book while it is playing.