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Film Description
Three years after helping to achieve some of the most amazing imagery in cinema history with 2001: A Space Odyssey, special effects maestro Douglas Trumbull made an auspicious directorial debut at age 29 with the environmentally themed science fiction classic Silent Running.
By the year 2008, all that remains of the Earth's plantlife is preserved in space, maintained under huge geodesic domes on board three ships orbiting the planet Saturn. Botanist and crewman Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) is horrified when the order comes from home to destroy the greenhouses, and kills his three human crewmates in order to prevent them from carrying out the termination. Injured in the process, Lowell is forced to rely on his three service robots as he begins a long and lonely voyage into the unknown in the one remaining station, determined to preserve what is left of his home planet's ecology.
With its remarkable special effects (especially the robot drones Huey, Dewey, and Louie), glorious score (including songs performed by Joan Baez), memorable sound effects (created by Joseph Byrd from the cult band The United States of America, a screenplay co-written by Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter) and Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues), and an impassioned central performance from Dern, Silent Running remains a uniquely contemplative and haunting adventure.
Acknowledged as a major influence on Pixar's WALL-E and Duncan Jones' Moon, Silent Running was directed by Douglas Trumbull, the special effects genius behind 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blade Runner, and, most recently, The Tree of Life
