Silent Running is a landmark 1972 film directed by Douglas Trumbull. Over the years, it became a cult sci-fi classic and is seen as one of the most pivotal philosophical movies for environmental movement. Recall that Greenpeace was started in 1971 and the spirit of the times was chiming with anti-nuclear sentiment. Obliteration of humankind was indeed an apocalyptic possibility under Cold War. Rachel Carson’s hugely influential 1962 book Silent Spring which showed the global impact of the pesticide DDT on nature shook the public to its core. The use of agent orange an artificial plant hormone as a defoliator during the Korean and Vietnam wars elevated peoples’ concerns. The humanity began to grasp that Spaceship Earth was in deep trouble due to human actions. This was the time when Buckminster Fullerene geodesic designs were becoming architectural realities and massive botanical greenhouses such as the Climatron of the Missouri Botanical Garden were being built. The movie may even have inspired much later projects such as Biosphere II now known as Landscape Evolution Observatory (LEO).
The screenplay by Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino and Steven Bochco conveys its ecological communiqué imaginatively. Through her voice Joan Baez adds a certain humane dimension to the production. Actor Bruce Dern, represented an idealistic crew member of a 21st-century space station refusing to destroy the only forest vegetation preserved from a degraded Earth. Douglas Trumbull worked on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as visual effects person. Here in his first director work, he contrasted his theme with that of Kubricks’. For instance the mission-driven murderous computer HAL with artificial intelligence capability contrasts with that of Lowell Freeman (Bruce Dern) in Silent Spring. This time a human is the murderer but for a ‘just cause’ of protecting riches of nature. The three accompanying drones are also very amicable and physically present in contrast with cunning evil eye of HAL that is omnipresent. This can be extended to Ridley Scott’s Alien series as well.
Another point to note is that Douglas Trumbull wanted to surpass his past limitations in 2001: A Space Odyssey. There unlike as described in the Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, Saturn and its system of rings deemed impossible to reproduce realistically in an all analog filming environment. Therefore, the USS Discovery traveled to Jupiter instead. In Silent Spring we see Saturn in full glory within the establishment and reveal shots of the massive spaceships. A greenhouse contained ecosystem requires solar energy input and being in orbit of a planetary body such as the Saturn which is very far away from it is counter intuitive. In an ecological perspective this is a massive flaw.
The Silent Running probably will never rival Ridley Scott’s The Martian in terms of scientific correctness (except the intense storm in the opening scene of the Martian) but they share a cool survival theme based on ecology and botany. However, as the film critic Roger Ebert puts it:
“Silent running” isn’t, in the last analysis, a very profound movie, nor does it try to be. (If it had, it could have been a pretentious disaster.) It is about a basically uncomplicated man faced with an awesome, but uncomplicated, situation. Given a choice between the lives of his companions and the lives of Earth’s last surviving firs and pines, oaks and elms, and creepers and cantaloupes, he decides for the growing things. After all, there are plenty of men. His problem is that, after a while, he begins to miss them.”
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