One Man & His Drone — Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running
It is widely noted that Silent Running was effects guru turned director Douglas Trumbull’s professional reaction to his time working on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The story of a group of scientists attempting to maintain plant life in outer space may seem hokey and unusual, but it’s one that would prove the ideal platform for a humanist meditation on life itself. One ought to also acknowledge the tonal counter-nature of the two films, with Silent Running’s core meditation on nature an explicit riposte toward 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL (similarly to how The Tree Of Life, another film Trumbull worked on, could be seen as a response to Kubrick’s film). Trumbull perhaps goes one better than Kubrick by presenting the ultimate dystopian vision of Earth; man has killed nature.
A hugely emotive score, the opening bars of which set the tone for the premise of the film itself, surrounds Silent Running. We’ll discuss the emotional angle of the film in a moment, but needless to say, Trumbull’s work is one of haute manipulation. The opening credits of the film play out against a backdrop of close-up imagery of nature. Rabbits forage in grass, and birds can be seen rustling against trees, before Trumbull’s camera pulls back to reveal there true fate; a sealed, artificial unit floating across space. The close-up introduction is a warm opening for a film ground in a clinical genre. For a clear example of just how different Silent Running feels compared to its contemporaries, place these shots next to the establishing ones in the TMA-1 section of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The spaceships of Silent Running, while firmly ground in some form of reality, eschew the realist designs of Kubrick’s film and in place is a rig, albeit one that is essentially a floating botanical garden by way of early-1970’s developments and advances in Japanese building design.
One of the key areas in which many of the science fiction films of the 1960’s and 1970’s alienated their audiences were in their lead performers. While no doubt unintentional, a science heavy figure would always prove a difficult sell to an audience largely made up of regular folk. Our protagonist in Silent Running, Bruce Dern’s Freeman Lowell, first appears under a shoal; He’s more space monk than space-man, and even his Christian name is little more than a hint at his overriding characteristic (He’s worlds away, pun intended, from a character like The Day The Earth Stood Still fellow of science Professor Jacob Barnhardt). The extremity of the situation that Lowell is placed in is the most engaging aspect of the film, with the assertion that the whole thing is, in the words of one of Lowell’s colleagues “Nonsense, insane” a fitting description of the movie itself as much as it is the events within. Such a premise, coupled with the emotive atmosphere leads the viewer into adopting a wholly surrendered position. Some may call it calculated, but cinema is clearly a manipulative medium.
Lowell is an emotional force. He’s quite literally driven by anger (driven crazy, even). We never see the scorched Earth referred to by the films characters, and while references towards “home” are by and large ambiguous, the circumstances of the scenario cement just how uncertain everything is. Trumbull’s film is a surprisingly intense experience, especially for a work very much produced for a family audience. How many family films feature a man being killed by a shovel? Or nuked by their colleagues? Proceedings border on the psychodrama at times, with a scene in which Lowell uses his drone assistants to bury the man he had earlier murdered exemplifying this askew approach. Somehow though, Trumbull constantly seems able to pull back and remind the viewer exactly why Lowell is acting this way, in turn helping to seal the deal, so to speak. A beautifully delivered speech by the central protagonist, presented straight in to the lens of the camera in a long-take lasting several minutes, cements over the cracks presented by his dubious behaviour, leaving only the bare emotions behind. This harks back to the manipulation allegation from earlier.
On a similar note, that Trumbull manages to draw such affecting emotion from the most unusual of objects is hugely impressive. The most impressive moments of the film revolve around Lowell’s relationship with the drones. The crux of this success comes with the fact that what should be ridiculous never actually does denigrate in to stupidity. One such scene might just be the films most fondly remembered, as Lowell teaches Huey and Dewey to plant a tree. The moment recalls all manner of coming of age tales, with Dern as the dysfunctional father figure teaching his sons the way of the land.
While said sequence is touching in its conception and execution, it is a number of other moments involving the drones that really takes things up a notch to a higher level of emotional resonance. Two incidents, both revolving around a third, “deceased” drone, Louie bring with them the most explicit reaction. There’s no more poignant a moment in Silent Running than in the scene in which Lowell posthumously names drone #3, along with the lament of “Little Louie God bless him, he’s not with us any more”, as the camera zooms in on the static that once was “Louie’s” monitor. A similarly measured response can be found in the gang’s reaction to finding the lost drone’s leg leg. Yet Louie’s tale is one of caution, with Lowell keen to emphasise the reasons behind Louie’s demise, as a means of indoctrinating the other drones.
Lowell is an almost tragic, lonely lonely, Dern’s face arguably the source of the most interesting visuals on screen, a happenstance made all the more remarkable by the fact that the film is very much a visually led work. Dern, shamefully forgotten by the Academy of 1973 gives a career best performance, in a turn that fell in the middle of the actor’s most interesting period (Silent Running was bookended by Drive, He Said and The King Of Marvin Gardens). The actor is often forgotten amongst his contemporaries, yet his performance here happily sits alongside the finest that Nicholson, Bridges or Hopper have to offer.
Silent Running is pre-Star Wars and no Space Opera, yet the influence of Trumbull’s work is certainly prescient in the drones, who are very much a precursor to the Lucas droid. This peaks with the remarkable operation scene, adding a humane spin to what were once solely the realms of sci-fi horror or the comedy sidekick. Huey, Dewey and Louie are tangible beings, their literal human innards ensuring that theirs is a convincing and emotional presence. It’s appropriate that the team of paraplegics that bring the drones to life receive the first credit as the film closes.
Trumbull’s revolutionary yet somehow still sincere use of product placement, coupled with a fantastical tale that is still ground in the (as then) known facts about space travel results in a work that still impresses and feels startlingly relevant four decades on (There’s specifically a certain charm in the use of American Airwaves in Silent Running, especially given the predominance of the Pan-Am logo in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the two brands keen rivalry). From eco-driven sci-fi of Pixar’s Wall-E and James Cameron’s Avatar to the used space of the aforementioned Star Wars and even Ridley Scott’s Alien, the continuing influence of Trumbull’s work can be felt all across the science fiction genre.
Taking in Silent Running almost forty years on from its original release gives the film an extra layer capable of exploration and leaves it open to further interpretation. One could look to the core themes of Silent Running (and indeed the plot itself), and Lowell’s determination to preserve a specific way of life as an analogy for the films director himself. An old school craftsman in an age increasingly digitally maintained, with Silent Running Douglas Trumbull created a work that is as unique and humane as it is essential.
