Silent Running (1972)

(Second Viewing, YouTube Streaming, December 2022) I first saw Silent Running a long, long time ago and it left a mark. This being said, I’m not sure I like it. What I find most remarkable about the film is that it predates Star Wars and a lot of classic space Science Fiction by a good five years—you would swear that it’s at least a late-1970s film because it’s got the look that we associate with the era (Alien, Space 1999, Star Wars, 2010). It’s also a strongly environmentalist film from the first militant Silent Spring generation, further making it more modern than you’d think. This reflects all the way to the grim, very New Hollywood ending in which humans are judged and found less desirable than nature. So many contrivances are required to get there (starting with putting biospheres in spaceships around Jupiter, not to mention artificial gravity) that the film doesn’t quite work as the hard-SF story that it presents itself to be—it’s best seen as a fable of a particularly dark sort. Visually, there’s some still-effective material to Silent Running, with surprisingly good sets explained by the film being shot inside a decommissioned aircraft carrier. Director Douglas Trumbull’s experience in special effects clearly shows here and explains why the film echoes later films—he worked on a lot of them and helped design what the standard look of the future became circa 1980 or so. Still, for all of the technical wizardry, there are plot beats here that feel dishonest—artificial and manipulated (and often moronic, considering that one character is supposed to know all about plants) in order to provide a downbeat moral lesson, which is another very New Hollywood thing. It’s that thematic content that, measured against later, more audience-friendly films of the post-Star Wars era, seems to better date the film and make it a creation of its time—not many post-1977 films would have taken such a melancholic tone. What makes it fascinating, then, is the mismatch between the form and the substance of the movie, as apparently two eras of filmmaking battle for dominance. I’m not sure I like Silent Running, but there’s a lot to dig into here. You may not like its message, but it’s not as if talking about biosphere degradation feels as ridiculous as Robbie the Robot now, right?