DISNEY IS NOT a paradigm of cool. Not that nature movies generally are, but most viewers will without a doubt recall with a wince those semi-documentaries which manage to cram the grand expanses of nature into the vacuum tube confines of the American psyche with a liberal lubricaiton of cuteness. You know, the bear cubs clumsily gamboling about, choreographed to silly bassoon music and chortling narration ("Well, I guess our little friends got more than they bargained for when they tried to get into that beehive...")

The story of Never Cry Wolf, from Farley Mowat's best-selling autobiographical account, seems to beg for such treatment. A young biologist (Charles Marin Smith) dispatched by the Canadian government to the wilds of Alaska to monitor the depletion of Caribou herds at the fangs of wolves, finds that these predators don't conform at all to the fearsome image of snarling savagery--they're actually peace-loving, good-natured animals.

The danger for the filmmaker lies in the logical extension of this premise, to wit: in fact, you even say that, gosh, they're kinda cute, like big lovable dogs...

Make no mistake, Never Cry Wolf is a Disney production and does have gamboling wolf pups, but director Carroll Ballard does not dish out family-restaurant-sized portions of easily-digestible nature. Instead, he treats his subject in a startlingly cool manner, devoid of treacly sentiment but shot through with a quiet, mystical passion, as in his magical The Black Stallion. Intensely beautiful images unfold one after the other, invoking that rarest of sensations nowadays un-pre-packaged wonder.

Far from being the principal actors, the wolves are only part of the larger tapestry of nature, and Never Cry Wolf becomes a chronicle of self rather than scientific discovery. Mowat's point, that wolves provide a necessary service by killing off the old, weak and diseased members of the caribou herds, is anchored in an intense awareness of the interrelatedness of all things in nature--a perception from which man has unfortunately separated himself from many superimposed layers of civilization.

All of which may at first appear stunningly obvious as we sit munching on stale popcorn in the air-conditioned civilization of some urban movie theater. Ballard's remarkable achievement consists in translating this awareness, seemingly so self-evident, into images that work powerfully on both aesthetic and intuitive levels.

THE OPENING has Mowat sitting in the middle of a glacial field, attempting to ward off an enveloping blizzard with the comical and futile bureaucratic gesture of typing a work report. By the end of the film he is running stark naked in the midst of a stampeding herd of caribou. Neither scenes are models of scientific investigation--let alone verisimilitude--but they serve admirable to frame Mowat's journey into awareness through the medium of Ballard's slightly surreal vision. If at times the meshing of beguiling photography with the Tangerine Dream-like score begins dangerously to suggest Jean-Jacques Beneix's slideshow of an imaginary Yukon trip, at least Ballard errs on the side of elegance.

Even the moments of Disney-esque nature whimsy have a more adult flavor than usual. The film's wry humor rises to considerable heights when Mowat, attempting to gain the trust and respect of the wolves, marks his territory with many teapots and several hours worth or urination--a process which takes the head or alpha-wolf George only two brief minutes.

We can only be thankful that George and his pack are allowed to maintain their autonomy of lupine identity--they're not vested with comforting little anthropomorphic traits that would make them seem at home mowing our neighbors' lawn. In fact, it is Mowat who consistently tries to come closer to the wolves' style of life, as his attempt to approximate their diet (mice) and territory-marking habits illustrate. These two comical and slightly disgusting episodes grow out of the film's deeply serious message, that it is not for us to quantify and tame nature, but simply to live in it and marvel at it.