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Reviews
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973)
The Ultimate Declaration of Narcissism from the "Me" Generation
I won't bother to give a plot description because there is no plot and what little there is to say about what happens over the two unbearable hours this movie steals from the viewer's life has already been adequately covered in previous comments.
I'd like to give my perspective as a "Gen X"er who was shown this movie by his Baby Boomer father. I was 18 at the time and my father had dumped my mother for another woman 12 years prior. I was lucky to have a step-dad, because my old man put in the obligatory every-other-weekend like it was parole. He usually just left me with his wife, who hated my guts, while he worked overtime making six figures. She at least mailed the support checks, because when he dumped her, I quit seeing them.
When I was 16, he moved to Texas to avoid paying her support too, so him and I didn't talk for a couple of years. It took six months of refusing to take his calls to get a plane ticket and a week of his life. The trip was suppose to help us to reconcile and I hoped to get answers as to why up until now my existence had been some sort of thorn in his side.
I asked him the tough questions, the ones I'd asked myself my entire childhood. I was treated to a reluctant "sorry", some evasive non-answers and a lot of whining about how lousy his childhood was and it was everyone else's fault for his mistakes. Then one afternoon, he sat me down to watch "Jonathan Livingston Seagull", while he helped his girlfriend make dinner. He gave me a whole prep talk about it before. This movie was suppose to answer everything for me.
After watching this movie I accepted what I already knew. That my father was a narcissistic people-user who was incapable of doing anything for anyone if it somehow inconvenienced his life. There are great films out there about families who drift apart and reconcile; movies about people who realize the error of their ways and make amends with their past. Instead, I get shown a cheesy relic about a G- D- seagull who wants more out of life than helping his "family" survive.
Apparently, Jonathan is better than the other seagulls. They can catch fish heads for the flock while he finds new ways of flapping his wings. I mean, WTF? Apparently my father's idea of philosophy is meaningless double talk that wouldn't be fit for inclusion in the DVD extras of "Kung Fu". Read the quotes! Yes, do whatever you like, because freedom is "being" or happiness is not thinking about anyone else but yourself or something to that effect. Fly, fly away from the District Attorney. Explore new horizons where they can't garnish your paycheck.
My father has four kids and none of us keep in touch with him. Maybe he's leeching off some woman right now? Maybe he's homeless? I haven't talked to him in five years and I couldn't care less. I got sick of Jonathan Seagull asking to borrow my credit card so he could go fly off and "discover himself" over and over again. So to me this movie is about my father and every other self-romanticizing Baby Boomer with a Beamer, arthritis and grandkids he never sees. Maybe Greenpeace will be there for all the elderly seagulls who fly out to sea alone.