In the late 1960s and early 1970s, before Star Wars burst into the mainstream/blockbuster arena, science fiction films were not usually regarded as action movies. There is very little action in films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Andromeda Strain, Colossus: The Forbin Project, or Silent Running. Instead, each of these films dealt with ideas such as the implications of man’s actions on the world or technology. Silent Running, considered by many to be the first environmentalist film, deals with man’s attitude regarding the destruction of the forests and their eco-systems.
In the movie, which is set in the somewhat distant future, the Earth has become devoid of trees and grass. How it got that way is not explained, aside from some comments about the lack of a blue sky and a constant temperature in all parts of the world. Several large spaceships, equipped with gigantic transparent domes, carry what’s left of the forests and their wildlife into the relative safety of space until such time as they can assist in the reforestation of the planet. One of those ships is the Valley Forge.
The Valley Forge’s crew has been waiting for the signal to return home for eight years. So, when news that an important transmission is forthcoming begins to circulate, the crew believes that the time has finally come. The caretaker of the forest domes on the Valley Forge, Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern), has hopes to be the project manager on the reforestation of Earth. His crewmates, however, aren’t expecting that he’ll get such an honor. In fact, they doubt that such a reforestation will ever occur. They think that if such a thing were destined to happen, the signal to return home would have arrived much sooner. They believe that humanity has lost interest in such things and that Lowell’s hope for the Earth is misguided.
Lowell tends to the forest and gardens of the Valley Forge with great care. When the rest of the crew eats the standard issue processed food from the ship’s mess hall, he chastises them for eating “crap” as he eats the fruits and vegetables he’s grown in the dome. He gets angry when they step on the flowers he’s planted. And, when that long-awaited transmission orders the ship to jettison and detonate the forest domes and return home, Lowell decides that he can’t let that happen.
Audiences raised on pseudo-science fiction fare like The Matrix and Iron Man will find Silent Running to be a complete snooze-fest. There are no action sequences. No thrilling CGI effects. No clearly defined good and evil characters. And, for me, that’s a good thing. The story is relatively simple – perhaps a little too simple – but it is told with conviction and I appreciate that.
The special effects are relatively crude — aside from the Drones, the robot helpers the crew uses to assist with the maintenance of the ship — and the soundtrack is quite dated, with Joan Baez warbling on about the “earth between our toes,” but the simplistic tale of a man who tries to defend that which is defenseless is refreshingly succinct in an age where most movies seem to go out of their way to be overly confusing.
3.5 out of 5.0 stars
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