Recovered Classic: Silent Running


Far from being a hit when it was originally released in 1972, Silent Running has since become regarded as something of a minor cult classic. Surfacing just four years after 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is clearly influenced by Stanley Kubrick’s movie, which isn’t too surprising when you consider that director Douglas Trumbull supervised some of the special effects on the earlier film.

In truth, Trumbull the director is far from spectacular, but the fact that he was later responsible for some of the effects seen in Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a good indication of where Silent Running scores highest.

Set in the not-too-distant future, the film opens on board the Valley Forge, one of three spaceships orbiting Saturn. The vessel is, in effect, a giant celestial greenhouse. With the Earth having wiped out its ecosystem, the ship is home to the planet’s last surviving specimens of trees and plants, which are housed in a number of biodomes.

The man responsible for looking after these floating forests is Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern), a staunch conservationist who has to put up with constant jibes about his peculiar eco-friendly ways from his ignorant trio of crewmates. But when an order comes through to jettison and destroy the greenhouse domes, Dern refuses to accept the decision and snaps. After killing his three colleagues, he escapes with the last remaining forest by guiding the ship through one of Saturn’s rings and heads for the safety of deep space. Alone with just two drones and lots of trees for company, he faces one probem….his own descent into guilt-ridden madness.

Looking somewhat dated three decades later, there’s still much to admire here. OK, so the eco message is a bit heavy handed (aided by the Joan Baez soundtrack) and Dern only just manages to carry off holding the second part of the film together on his own, but many of the sets, not to mention the impressive effects, still stand up to scrutiny. Indeed, trivia hounds will be interested to learn that several shots of the Valley Forge and its sister ships were later re-used in TV series Battlestar Gallactica. Not only that, but the special effects scenes of the planet Saturn were originally intended for use in Kubrick’s earlier film.

In many ways, Silent Running resonates more if you remember first seeing it all those years ago. It seems to have an indefinable quality, something oddly appealing, which sticks with you and gives you a totally different perspective to what you’d get if you were experiencing it for the very first time in the highly advanced world that is the 21st century.
Perhaps the cute drones (forerunners of C-3P0 and R2-D2??) have something to do with it. Starting out as maintenance robots, they are reprogrammed by Dern (who christens them Huey and Duey) to serve as gardeners, surgeons, card buddies, whatever he wants them to be in fact. They also help to keep him just the right side of sane. As for the final shot, of Duey watering the forest with a battered watering can, it’s a real tearjerker (or at least it was when I first saw it as a child). Interesting factoid: Trumbull used multiple-amputee actors to operate the drones.

Admittedly it doesn’t rank among the sci-fi elite, but while it might be scientifically bonkers, there is a rich vein of quality present throughout Silent Running, underlined by the names of Michael Cimino and Steven Bochco, who are listed among the writing credits. And the film’s message (that man must ultimately be his own saviour) is a worthy one, Dern’s final act being a last desperate attempt to seed a second possible chance for mankind.

Slow, but wonderful all the same.

David Lichtneker

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