 Silent Running (1972) The concept is that Earth no longer sustains any wildlife (probably thanks to a rogue anti-Bruce Dern faction), so three massive space ships float in orbit around Saturn, each with four large geodesic domes, inside which are trees, rivers, waterfalls, rabbits, crickets, and Bruce Dern. These domes contain the last of the Earth's biosphere, as well as the last of Earth's Bruce Dern. Lowell (portrayed throughout the film by Bruce Dern) gets the shock of his idyllic life when he and his four brutish co-astro-rangers are told to dump the domes, nuke them, and hightail it back to Earth, where the American Airlines space vessels (an early and rather confusing case of product placement—American Airlines hardly comes across in a positive light) can be used for commercial purposes. Bruce Dern (playing Dern Bruceman) flips out, murders his coworkers, and fakes an accident so that Mission Control thinks they've been crippled. Now, speaking of crippled, Dern spends the rest of the film talking to two cute little robots, Drones 1 and 2, also named Huey and Duey, who—as explained in the DVD's "making of" featurette—are played quite brilliantly by actors with no legs. It's hard to decide whether I liked the movie—there were long, slow stretches where nothing seemed to happen, several moments of rank overacting on the part of the film's star (the previously mentioned Bruce Dern), yet an overall sweetness and simplicity that reminded me of my favorite afternoons in the late 1960s when me and Moon Pie would sit around smoking bamboo pipes, talking about the mysteries of life, and plotting the next big revolution, a revolution in personal hygiene technology that has yet to occur (and yes, you guessed it, I am talking about laser cyber-bathtubs). On the plus side, Dern's relationship with the drones is strangely touching—the filmmakers were highly successful in giving the robots personalities while clearly maintaining their robot-osity. For instance, early in the film, Drone 3 is destroyed while flying through the rings of Saturn, and one gets the sense that the remaining drones are experiencing robotic sadness, if such a thing exists. Dern treats the drones like they're his children, and that aspect really works. In general, the effects work well, thankfully underplayed so that the setting feels like a working cargo ship. One gets the feeling that later sci-fi movies, such as Alien and The Karate Cyborg, took their cue from Silent Running if only on that level. On the minus side, the film plods forward at a nearly glacial pace, and there doesn't seem to be an actual storyline, other than Dern's efforts to keep the forest alive. And the film ends on a rather pointless, semi-bleak, semi-hopeful note. I won't give it away, but it's sufficiently ambiguous to fit into the "message films" of the 1960s, yet sufficiently stupid to not make a lot of sense, particularly the self-imposed fate of Bruce Dern. Worse yet are two excruciating montages underscored by two nail-on-chalkboard Joan Baez songs about "laying the soil" or some other longhair hippie bullcrap. I don't know who thought Joan Baez had a decent voice; to me she just sounds ridiculous. Perhaps they should have re-scored the film with the music of Mike + the Mechanics. Overall, by far one of the most head-scratching sci-fi movies. But if you like your sci-fi slow and hippie, rent Silent Running. You owe it to Bruce Dern.
Review by Crimedog |