Returning to
1972: Just three years after 2001: A space Odyssey and five years before Star Wars, Universal Pictures produced one of the most renowned sci-fi films of all time.
In fact , critic Mark Kermode cited it as one of the best movies ever made.
A film that highlighted environmental issues, a future where the temperature of Earth is 75 degrees and unsustainable for plant life.
Arc ships are sent into space, carrying the last vestiges of flora and fauna taken from around our dying planet and housed within the crafts array of giant bio-domes.
But even this is subject to Nixen like budget cuts and what plays out is a film that deals with the last forest in existence.
That film was Silent Running.
Featuring Bruce Dern in one of his finest performances, Silent Running has all the hallmarks of a sci-fi classic. Cute robots, awsum space ships and songs by Joan Baez. Who could ask for more? Yet at the time Derns performance was lauded by critics as over the top and Baez's musical interludes deemed annoying.
BRUCE DERN
Is he over acting? Not really. His character Freeman Lowell is passionate about sustainability, which was often a point of ridicule by industrialists, hell bent on making the world into one giant car park and charging the very air we breath.
Dern was fully aware of this and enthused these aspects within Lowells personality, resulting in a character driven to the point of being necrotic and comical. Especially when cooped up in a space ship for twelve years, planting trees, while his ship mates act like yocal redneck rejects from any given trucker movie.
They drink beer, play poker, shoot pool and race dune buggies around the space forest, much to the annoyance of Lowell, as they run over his plants. Jesus. it really shows just how apathetic the mindset of this universe has become.
Basically these guys are assholes. They don't give a flying fuck about saving the ecology of the Earth. This is highlighted in several group scenes, where Lowell grows continually tired of their ignorance.
It all comes to a head when the company recall them to Earth and order the destruction of the biodomes. The red necks cheer. Lowell is devastated.
Eventually he explodes into a rant about a child never knowing what its like to sleep in tall green grass on a lazy summer afternoon. To which his redneck buddies burst into giggles like three year olds.
Fuck. These guys really need to die right now. And so they do. But even after Lowell kills them all off, he still shows remorse for what he has done.
It could be said that Derns little rants on ecology are akin to Woke before there was even a name for it. Before Woke became tiresome and unpopular due to its pronoun dictatorships. It could also be argued that the three hicks are just as equally Counter-Woke in their own brainwashing.
But whatever. This was a time when Science Fiction highlighted real issues before it became pew-pew Space Opera.
At any rate, for an actor best known for playing villian's and character parts Bruce Dern is fantastic. Nobody could have pulled this performance off better. NOBODY. His plea to his nonchalant compatriots, not to destroy the last forests, is a plea to us all.
No CGI here folks, that's real tears welling in Derns eyes, as he gives Jordan Peterson a run for his money.
JOAN BAEZ
Besides being a rock star, Joan Baez was best known at the time for her political activism. She was part of the waning flower power Zeitgeist of the time, which also included protests against Vietnam, the Cold War and deforestation. So her material dealt with matters of ecology and a better world.
Baez contributed two songs to the movie. The first being 'Rejoice in the Sun' and the second (also called Silent Running) .
Both feature in the two montages that appear at the beginning and towards the latter part of the film.
Although her lyrics suit the themes in Silent Running, I must admit it was a little jarring when her first song ('Rejoice in the Sun') pops up. Baez alto-style of singing wasn't everyone's cup of tea. So its easy to understand why critics would pan her.
In her defense, the second montage (featuring her song 'Silent Running') is a delight to watch and is one of the best sequences in the whole movie. This is attributed to the comedic set up before the second montage appears.
COMEDIC SET UPS
Having now gone awol, Bruce Derns character attempts to teach his new found droid pals Huey and Dewey, how to plant plants with great comical effect.
'Pitiful!' He sighs, as the two droids haphazardly make a hash of digging a hole and sticking a plant in it.
Its a great scene which lightens up the mood, particularly after Dern has killed off his annoying-as-fuck ship mates (trust me, they had it coming) and lost one of the three droids (Louie) in a space storm. Thus the following Baez led montage works effortlessly and really chugs the film along quite nicely.
Plus being a film that predominantly features zero women in it, this makes Baez's input even more relevant. She could be considered as the Mother Nature motif, that encompasses the narrative.
ORIGINATOR OF THE CUTE ROBOT TROPE
Of course, no 70s' sci-fi movie was complete without a couple of cute robots. And this movie started it all. True, robots had featured before in sci fi, such as Forbidden Planet and Lost in Space but these were more of the lumbering Frankenstein types.
Enter Huey and Dewey: the ships two surviving maintenance drones. This was a time before R2D2 and other astro-mech droids had become a stalwart of all space opera. In fact, George Lucas asked Silent Runnings director Douglas Trumbull, if he could borrow the idea for his droids in Star Wars.
The three drones featured in Silent Running, were played by four bilateral amputees, Mark Persons as Drone 1 (Dewey), Cheryl Sparks and Steven Brown as Drone 2 (Huey) and Larry Whisenhunt as Drone 3 (Louie). They used their hands as the robots feet and are thoroughly convincing as bi-pedal robots.
What makes them even more endearing, is the little quirks these robots have. They cheat at poker and hiss and bleep when Lowell reprimands them.
Over the course of the movie, its hard not to have a soft spot for them and when one of them is damaged in a collision with a dune buggy, its almost heartbreaking.
This leads into one for the most poignant scenes, where said robot is in the sick bay, while Lowell tries his best to save the little guy. I was in fucking tears.
LEGACY
All in all, Silent Running might not compete with the later marvels of the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises or the giddy heights of Battle Star Galactica.
But it was the first.
The first to combine the ideas of cute robots and ecological themes, that later proliferated into the latter. Just look at the film WALL-E and you can see echoes of Silent Running.
Silent Running is a slow movie for sure. There are no pew-pew space battles and big showdowns with evil dark lords.
But where it might lack in action and adventure, it more than makes up for with endearing characters and uncomfortable truths.
