by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: Douglas Trumbull
CAST: Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint
MY RATING: 5/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 71% Fresh
PLOT: In a future where all plant life on Earth is extinct, an astronaut works to preserve the last of Earth’s flora, kept in domed greenhouses aboard a spacecraft.
Silent Running was directed by Douglas Trumbull, a visual effects specialist whose VFX credits include Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Blade Runner. In 1968, he worked with Stanley Kubrick as the Special Photographic Effects Supervisor on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Shortly thereafter, he was given the opportunity to direct his own film. With a script by Michael Cimino and Deric Washburn (who would both later go on to fame with The Deer Hunter), Universal Studios offered him a limited budget and final cut (!) as part of a project to encourage independent filmmakers in the wake of the success of Easy Rider in 1969.
With a crew of mostly college students as modelmakers, and with no directing experience whatsoever, Trumbull created a sci-fi parable that has some grand ideas, but it never quite achieves liftoff. I don’t know how Silent Running reads at the screenplay level, but on its feet and on the screen, it slogs.
In an unspecified future, Bruce Dern plays Freeman Lowell, one of four astronauts living semi-permanently on a massive, mobile space station, the Valley Forge. It’s part of a small fleet of similar spacecraft, each bearing several greenhouse domes housing the last remnants of Earth’s botanical ecosystem, including plants, trees, and small forest animals like squirrels, rabbits, frogs, etc. The astronauts are tasked with protecting these greenhouses until the eventual call back to Earth (they’re currently in the vicinity of Saturn).
[Note: there is more than a passing resemblance between this plotline and that of Pixar’s Wall*E, but I’m sure that’s homage, not plagiarism.]
When the call comes, however, it’s not what they expect. They’re ordered to detach the greenhouse domes from their ship, detonate them, and return home immediately. No explanation is given. These orders do not sit well with Lowell, and before long he’s alone on the Valley Forge with one dome left and only the ship’s waddling repair drones for company as he heads for the dark side of Saturn.
That’s about it for story. Once he’s alone, there’s not much left for Bruce Dern to say or do except have one-sided conversations with the repair drones while he tries to teach them to play poker. It’s clear that Trumbull’s focus was on putting his visual effect concepts on the screen in a way that would evoke 2001, but he did not appear to lose much sleep over pacing or plotting. For a movie that clocks in under 90 minutes, there are endless shots of Lowell tending to plant and animal life, programming and reprogramming the drones, staring at the stars while confronting his guilt over his actions. It’s almost a relief when he is forced to administer mechanical first aid to a drone that gets accidentally run over by an offroad go-cart. (You read that right.)
There are too many other movies out there about castaways and solo adventures that were way more successful for me to give Silent Running a pass just because of its cult status. There was never one exterior shot of the spacecraft that did not look like a model. Explosions in space consist of a bright flare of light that dissipates quickly. Bruce Dern’s acting is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s put to no good use. It’s clear that Trumbull was counting on the effects to do a lot of the heavy lifting from a story-telling perspective, but they looked so fake that I was taken out of the story whenever they took front and center…which is a lot.
As a bookmark in VFX history between 2001 and the game-changing Star Wars, I suppose Silent Running does have some historical significance. It’s clear the movie was made with tender loving care. But from a cinematic perspective, it’s dull, dull, dull.
[Second Note: the film’s score was composed by Peter Schickele, a rather brilliant musician/comedian who is better known as P.D.Q. Bach. The score is nothing memorable, but it includes two original songs sung by Joan Baez. Yes, Joan Baez. It’s a VFX-heavy sci-fi parable with two musical montages. It takes all kinds…]
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 