Silent Running

Douglas Trumbull, USA 1972, 89 minutes

The year is 2008 and all earth's natural plant and animal life have been destroyed, rendering the surface of the planet uninhabitable, due to an unspecified nuclear fall-out. A group of space stations have therefore been sent out to Saturn to act as giant greenhouses for all the earth's plant life so that if, in the future, the Earth is once more able to provide a habitat for them, they are not lost forever.

When the project is terminated however, the "caretakers" receive orders to blow up the space stations/greenhouses (with the plants in them) and head for home. Freeman Lowell (in an excellent performance by Bruce Dern), seemingly the only one who actually cares what happens to the plantlife, kills his three colleagues and cuts his station free.

Lowell then faces huge problems, making difficult choices to preserving the possibility of a second chance for mankind. He is aided by three robots; Huey, Louie and Dewey, the names alone signifying how cute they are.

This is science fiction, but with a strong ecological bias (all you tree huggers out there will love this) and be warned, this is a bit of a high emotion flick.

This was the debut film of Trumbull, who previously worked with Stanley Kubrick on the special effects of a certain 2001: A Space Odyssey (those startling trip sequences on entering Jupiter - yep, the very man). While benefitting from Trumbull's special effects expertise the film also boasts the script team (Washburn, Bochio and Cimino) who went on to write The Deer Hunter.

The film is however, very much a period piece (as most sci fi is, see Fritz Lang's Metropolis for a good view of problems forseen for the future in the 1920's). This is undoubtedly enhanced by the Joan Baez title song and the 1970s haircuts.

Although the script is probably somewhat stretched on a full length film, much of the enjoyment in the film comes from the excellent performance by Dern, the hippy dippy tree/forest sequences and the space go-kart chases (what was I saying about the film being a period piece?).

Bring your kaftan and sit back and enjoy kitschy seventies sci fi at its best.

Review by Stephen J Brennan
Taken from EUFS Programme 1997-98