Review #18: Silent Running
If the last remnant of nature was preserved in space…
“Look on the wall behind you. Look at that little girl’s face. I know you’ve seen it. But do you know what she is never going to be able to see? She’s never going to be able to see the simple wonder of a leaf in her hand. Because there is not going to be any trees. Now, you think about that.” -Freeman Lowell
Synopsis
Centuries in the future, the last of the Earth’s biodiversity exists within a small handful of artificial domes onboard several massive spacecraft, parked out near Saturn for some reason. After decades of shipping supplies more than a friggen billion kilometers to keep the domes alive, Earth’s government decides the project is too expensive, and pulls the plug. The scientist are ordered to blow the domes into little bio-giblets, and then return home. The last person in the universe to care about squirrels, Dr. Freeman Lowell, stages a one-man revolt against the orders, apprehending one of the spacecraft and killing his own crew to save the trees. He tells mission command that the kerfuffle was a “mechanical malfunction”, which is definitely not suspicious in any way, and is, in fact, completely believable. The “malfunction” then conveniently drives the spacecraft into Saturn’s rings, where tracking will be impossible… seriously, no one is gonna make the call on this one??
Alone in the spacecraft, and with only one dome left, Lowell befriends the ships three drones, which he very originally names Huey, Dewey, and Louie, to help upkeep the wildlife in the biodome. Louie is dismembered when he is left outside while the ship careens through Saturn’s rings… an event that Lowell later uses to threaten the other drones for what happens when they “don’t listen” to him. Then, Lowell teaches the drones to play games for 40 minutes of screen time. Later, Huey is damaged when Lowell hits him with a space car, leaving only Dewey in full, working operation. As Earth sends out a tracking probe to locate Lowell’s ship, Lowell realizes there is only one way to preserve the dome forever. He trains Dewey in all of his nature-loving ways in order for him to continue to care for the dome, then jettisons it into deep space, self-destructing himself (and poor Huey) aboard the empty spacecraft. The dome then floats off into the depths of space with some hippie 70's eco-song playing in the background.
Review
Ah, I see your self-quarantine has brought you so far into boredom that you actually clicked on this review. What a perfect time for me to post it too, because otherwise I’m pretty sure no one would read it. I know I wouldn’t. But I guess we’re all just doing our part to help prevent the spread of COVID-19… by staying home and reading obscure sci-fi movie reviews. Anyways, thanks for sticking around! Now, here’s some person on the internet’s opinion of a subpar eco-science fiction movie from 1972…
I’ll be honest, I actually really wanted to like this movie; it boasts a cool setting, a good moral, and even three pretty unique drones that make the Gonk droids from Star Wars wish they had been conceived first… too bad George Lucas was too busy making other crap. For these things, I do have to give this film some brownie points. Silent Running opens with a pile of naturey scenes in a forest, accompanied by a weird LSD-inspired song — a song that continues to show up everywhere that it gets a chance. This song was probably the 1972 equivalent of today’s indie-pop garbage, but like today’s indie-pop garbage, it doesn’t really stand the test of time, and ends up feeling pretty out of place whenever it rears it’s LSD-inspired head. The scenes of the forest eventually zoom out to reveal that they are all… within a spaceship! But we already knew that by looking at the cover, so no brownie points there.
We are then introduced to Lowell’s crew, who clearly care much less about preserving nature than Lowell. I get that the whole point of this movie is supposed to show what happens when no one on Earth cares about nature anymore, but this is just straight up impossible. At one point, one character says that “everyone on Earth has a job”, and that there is “no more poverty”. If this were true, who else besides nature enthusiasts would sign up for a job on friggin Saturn, when they could just work on Earth? I digress, but when they get the orders to blow the domes and head home, no one besides Lowell hesitates. This forces him to take action by staging a fake malfunction. He stabs one crew member who tries to stop him, then blows the others up after luring them into a different dome. Judging by these actions, you’d expect his character to be pretty badass and tough in the face of danger, like Arnold Schwarzenegger or SpongeBob… instead, he’s more akin to Luke Skywalker in A New Hope; whiney and annoying, with little sense of self-reliance. This juxtaposition between character traits and actions causes noticeable viewer confusion, like when someone not from Florida watches someone from Florida drink a Natty lite while driving a lawnmower over an alligator.
Nonetheless, this scene turns out to be just about the most exciting part of the film, because after Lowell steers the ship through Saturn’s rings, almost nothing happens for a large swath of screen time. Lowell reprograms the two remaining drones… I’m sorry, can we talk about this? This ship is friggin huge, and has dozens of enormous biospheres to care for. You’re telling me that they have a grand total of three drones?! That’s almost as bad as only buying 3 crates of toilet paper for a two week quarantine… Regardless, he reprograms the drones to become more human-like, teaching them how to repair wounds, play card games, tend to nature, and bury the bodies of people he’s stabbed… Hmmm, maybe the moral of this movie isn’t as good as I thought it was… Also during this time, the plants in the biodome mysteriously start to die, and Lowell, with all of his botany knowledge, just can’t seem to figure out why — I’ll come back to this later. The remainder of this act of the movie is filled with Lowell’s flashbacks of before he started stabbing people, during one of which he accidentally hits Huey with a shipping car and damages him.
When Lowell learns that Earth is sending a tracking probe to find him, he knows that the government will find him and finish the mission that they started. But to save the biodome from the government, he first has to figure out why the plants are dying… turns out it’s because he forgot to give them light. *Deep breath* This guy is supposed to be a botany expert. I’m no genius, but when I think of what makes trees grow, I think of water and sunlight. Two things. My conclusion is that I have 2X the plant knowledge of professional botanists. Lowell passes this GrEaT ReVeLaTiOn onto Dewey, and they work together to set up a system of lights to keep the plants alive. Then, instead of teaching Dewey how to repair Huey, he simply tells Huey that he’s “too weak” to help Dewey take care of the plants, and brings him back on board the ship to self-destruct after jettisoning the biodome into space. The dome actually looks pretty cool flying through space with it’s new decked-out lights, but OH MY GOD it’s that LSD song again. Let me just put in some earplugs… there we go.
Conclusion
Allowing some leeway for the age of the film, Silent Running at least can stand on its own as a unique and symbolic science fiction movie, with a run time that won’t prevent you from watching during a lunch break. Facets of the plot and character development, however, jettison this film away from being a truly remarkable spectacle. Like Lowell, the team that brought you Silent Running found the means to bring something to life, but forgot to make it shine.
