PBS' `Lathe of Heaven': sci-fi on the stale side

Sometime in the near future, Portland will always be sunny.

While this shouldn't surprise anyone who's seen recent local weather reports reach new heights of inaccuracy, it should be warned the Rose City's cheery forecast actually comes via PBS's sci-fi classic, "The Lathe of Heaven." So don't trash the Gore-Tex just yet.

Based on the best seller by Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Lathe of Heaven" made a splashy debut on public television in 1980. According to news releases, it remains the most-requested movie from the PBS video library.

That could mean the two-hour TV production is indeed a classic. Or it could simply reconfirm one's suspicions that sci-fans are a fiercely monomaniacal lot, happy to spend their days quibbling over minor irregularities in Klingon uniforms and examining each frame from "The Lathe of Heaven."

Now, general viewers will be able to judge for themselves Sunday at 8 p.m., when KCTS and other public stations again show the movie. The airing is followed by a half-hour Bill Moyers interview with Portland resident Le Guin.

I confess that it left me lukewarm.

Part of the problem is that few kinds of fiction age as poorly as science fiction. The whiz-bang inventions and daring parables that thrill one generation of fans become another generation's campy amusement. So it went with Jules Verne; so it goes with L. Ron Hubbard and the fiasco of "Battlefield Earth."

Even so, certain sci-fi tales do defeat the limitations of futurism. Most often, they are social science fiction - the stuff that comes out of a laboratory or Mars and wreaks havoc with man's pursuit of a perfect society.

H.G. Wells, George Orwell and certainly Le Guin fall into this category. "The Lathe of Heaven" is about a man whose dreams actually have the power to reshape reality. It is also about the consequences of trying to create paradise in defiance of one's place in the cosmos.

Or to put it in the black-and-white terms of "The Lathe of Heaven," mankind's choice is either to let it flow or have it blow. The movie opens with a nuclear holocaust; the remaining time is spent explaining how we got there.

The story is established swiftly. George Orr (Bruce Davison) has discovered that whatever he dreams comes true. That realization has driven him to a suicide attempt and subsequent therapy with psychiatrist Dr. William Haber (Kevin Conway), who decides to mint Orr's dreams into utopian gold.

The first thing Dr. Haber banishes is Portland's rainy weather. So far as Northwest viewers are concerned, this may be the climax - and they may be right.

For while Dr. Haber has a nice enough vision that would rid the Earth of racism, poverty and precipitation, every action has a regrettable reaction. And although "The Lathe of Heaven" strives to say important things about man's arrogance vs. the natural order of the universe, a lot of what happens comes down to the very familiar mad-scientist routine.

This may not be Le Guin's fault. Perhaps Dr. Haber had a better-detailed point of view in the book. In the movie, though, he's a stick-figure blend of technological arrogance and socialist/totalitarian politics - a totalitarianism quaintly remote from today's romping privatization and laissez-faire capitalism.

The movie drags by contemporary standards. Having made the point about unintended consequences, "The Lathe of Heaven" makes it again and again, with events ranging from a plague that wipes out 6 billion people to an invasion from outer space. You'd really think Dr. Haber would get it.

But he doesn't, and we suffer. Much of the dialogue is cartoonish and the acting isn't very good. Three-quarters of the way through, you know you're sunk when George's lawyer/love interest, Heather Lalache (Margaret Avery), announces, "We have no choice." These, the four deadliest words known in fiction, truly signify the end of viewerkind.

Kay McFadden's TV column runs Mondays and Fridays in Scene. She can be reached at 206-382-8888, or at kmcfadden@seattletimes.com.