1972
DIRECTOR: DOUGLAS TRUMBULL PRODUCER: MICHAEL GRUSKOFF SCREENPLAY: DERIC WASHBURN, MIKE CIMINO, AND STEVE BOCHCO STARRING: BRUCE DERN (FREEMAN LOWELL), CLIFF POTTS (JOHN WOLF), RON RIFKIN (MARTY BARKER), JESSE VINT (ANDY KEENAN), MARK PERSONS (DRONE), STEVEN BROWN (DRONE), CHERYL SPARKS (DRONE), LARRY WHISENHUNT (DRONE)
Silent Running
UNIVERSAL • COLOR, 89 MINUTES
The caretaker for a galactic greenhouse containing Earth’s last remaining plant life goes toextreme measures to keep his forest alive.
For a low-budget movie made by a first-time director, Silent Running has endured far longer than might have been expected. The film’s future setting—the year 2008—has come and gone, and still the simple story of one man risking his life for a tiny scrap of natural beauty remains relevant. Because it is that rare science-fiction film with not only a social conscience but a heart, Silent Running carries an emotional resonance that lingers nearly half a century later, especially given our planet’s environmental challenges.
After creating the famous “slit-scan” process for the Star Gate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and supervising the visual tricks in The Andromeda Strain (1971), special-effects wizard Douglas Trumbull directed his own space odyssey, one with a positive message. “It’s really a story about morality,” Trumbull said of Silent Running, “about a man who makes a moral decision as to whether or not nature is more important than man.” In a radical move, Trumbull (with the aid of screenwriters Deric Washburn, Mike Cimino, and Steve Bochco) has his hero, Freeman Lowell, decide that nature is, in fact, more important than human life.
Lowell, the green-thumbed caretaker aboard the space station Valley Forge, is responsible for maintaining the last of the polluted planet’s greenery, housed in geodesic domes blooming with flora and fauna. Bruce Dern had built a career on playing offbeat villains in films like Roger Corman’s The Trip (1967) and Bloody Mama (1970) “until finally somebody had guts enough to put me in a part they knew I could do,” Dern said of his first heroic role. Lowell feels so passionately about preserving the ecology that he disobeys orders to destroy the greenhouses, hijacks the space station, and even murders to save his forests—but only with good intentions. He kills because he cares. Lowell poignantly confronts the problem of apathy when he says, “There’s no more beauty and there’s no more imagination” for one simple reason: “Nobody cares.” Dern brings an uneasy balance of heartfelt sincerity and deranged lunacy to the long-haired nature-lover.
Once his shipmates are gone, Lowell is not utterly alone in space. Trumbull recruited young bilateral amputees from southern California hospitals to play the small, boxlike drones, Huey, Dewey, and the ill-fated Louie (named for the animated nephews of Donald Duck). Lowell reprograms the friendly but silent robots to play poker, tend his gardens, and keep him company. Trumbull hoped the drones would show that “machines aren’t malevolent factors in our society,” he said. “[Technology] is just whatever you make it…. You can control a nuclear bomb with it or make it wash the dishes.” Silent Running’s charming, helpful robot characters spurred George Lucas to create R2-D2, and served as Joel Hodgson’s inspiration for Tom Servo and Crow, the two robots in the long-running comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Though Trumbull conceived the ideas, he was “never planning on directing,” he said. “On the other hand… nobody could think of anybody to handle this crazy picture.” So he stepped into the role of director while also supervising the effects. The results produced by Trumbull and his team equal or surpass anything seen in sci-fi up to that time; their twenty-five-foot model of the space station is a mini marvel patterned on the Landmark Tower from the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka, Japan.
Bruce Dern and director Douglas Trumbull
Bilateral amputee Steven Brown as a drone
Made for a mere $1 million, Silent Running’s understated but stunning space effects, coupled with its mindful themes, elevate it to the rank of classic. While the hippie vibe and Joan Baez ballads lock the film into its early 1970s time period, its message of ecological preservation makes it timeless, and more appropriate now than ever. Since the film was released in 1972, the earth’s forests and wildlife have grown even more endangered. Where is Freeman Lowell when we need him?
FAR-OUT FACTS
MIND-BLOWING MOMENT
KEEP WATCHING
MAROONED (1969)
SUNSHINE (2007)