Previously posted on blog and written by B. Demeter
Silent Running is listed as a sci-fi movie, but from my perspective is straight horror.
It takes place in the future as seen from 1972. In that future, there is no more plant life on the earth but there are three space freighters floating out around Saturn that have some geodesic bio-domes. I guess the plan was when the earth was ready the ships would return and the trees used to re-populate the forests.
Of course that is not what happens. The crew, which consists of only four guys and some dumpy pneumatic robots, gets orders to set nuclear charges, jettison the bio-domes into space, and blow them up. Which seems drastic, but considering how nothing in this movie is subtle it fits in.
Three of the four crewmen are happy with the news as it means their job is over and they can return home. One of the four crewmen is Bruce Dern and is overly attached to the trees. Over the eight years they’ve been out in space he has been tending to and caring for the plants (and birds, and crickets for some reason). He is righteously pissed off about destroying what could possibly be the last remaining plants in the solar system. So he murder/death/kills the other guys and drives the spaceship deeper into space to get away from the jerks that told them to blow up the plants.
Lets get this out of the way, Bruce Dern’s character is bat shit fucking insane. He is the Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Michael Myers of this film. It wasn’t written that way. I’m sure the makers of this film would want you to see him as the hero- but you would have to be insane to see him as the protagonist. He is a murderer.
I question how he got employed on the ship in the fist place. The other crew appears reasonable. They’re sort of shitheads, but otherwise they act how a space trucker should act. Dern, on the other hand, has gone off the deep end. He rants about no one makes anything with their hands any more. How there is no beauty left in the world because there are no trees. How did he pass the psych test to get onboard a spaceship?
From what we learn of the earth, the entire planet is a pleasant 75 degrees. All food is synthetic and everyone has a job. Mother Nature is dead but somehow the world kept on spinning and everything got better! The logic is beyond flawed.
So in Dern’s psycho mind, a world in which everyone is fed, comfortable, and space travel is common is a world not worth living in because there are no trees. That is bananas! As stupid as this movie is, if the option were between trees and space travel I would take space travel.
However, I do question the decision to nuke the bio-domes. It must have taken a lot of effort to build them, get everything planted and growing. Why destroy them? Why not just put them on the moon? Nothing makes sense in this movie.
Speaking of not making sense, I’m not even going to touch on how the pneumatic robots that seemingly run off of plastic punch cards have feelings. That is just a level of stupid I don’t want to go to.
So now Dern is out there, floating beyond the rings of Saturn. His trees are dying and he doesn’t know why. Now, I’m not a licensed botanist, but I’m aware of the basics- water, sunlight, soil; basics that botanist Dern is seemingly unaware of. So he’s piloted the ship deeper into space, which means less sunlight but he doesn’t put two and two together until the end of he film. A rescue ship has come to save him (they think the other crewmen were killed in an accidental explosion). Before they dock with his ship he realizes the plants are dying because they’re not getting enough light so he sets up a bunch of lamps. Then he detaches the bio-dome into space with a robot in there to water the trees and then kills himself by blowing up the ship.
I don’t even know what else to say. This movie is horrible.
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