Silent Running 4K

You simply can’t overstate how much Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey revolutionized science fiction cinema.  Almost overnight, a new bar was raised not only for achievement in special effects but for narrative and thematic maturity.  And when the marketing department stumbled upon “the ultimate trip” tagline, an entirely new audience of 18 to 24 year olds under the influence of mind altering substances found a complementary celluloid experience.  So it was probably just a natural evolution to hand the reigns over to special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull for a follow-up, 1972’s Silent Running, an environmentally aware sci-fi opus that, despite an earnest performance from Bruce Dern, lays on the counter-culture message a bit too thick.

Drifting through the solar system in an oversized terrarium, the crew of the SS Valley Forge is part of an ambitious - but now nearly forgotten - effort to preserve Earth’s forests for a future re-seeding when the post-apocalyptic conditions on our home planet return to a state of normalcy.  Most of the crew is indifferent to their mission, except for Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern), a throwback who grows his own food instead of relying on the ship’s technology and resents his status as the resident hippie.  So when a recall is announced, defunding their project and ordering the forests destroyed, Lowell takes desperate measures to protect Earth’s heritage, calling upon a trio of humanoid drones to help execute his plan.

Silent Running certainly has its heart in the right place; and this sort of consciousness-raising sci-fi was perfectly in tune with its literary counterparts of the day.  But Trumbull, making his directorial debut, isn’t quite up to the challenge.  His effects, utilizing the same model work and photographic illusions he pioneered for 2001, seem lacking in detail here.  Even the interiors (shot on a retired Naval vessel) only emphasize the visual monotony, livened up with a few product placement logos here and there for accuracy’s sake.  The world of Silent Running just doesn’t feel genuine or lived-in the way that Kubrick’s near future did.

However, while Kubrick coached his actor’s to echo the the cold, emotionless expanse of outer space, Trumbull gets one heck of a performance out of Bruce Dern.  Starting off as a single-minded environmental zealot but succumbing to the same existential loneliness his crew members couldn’t express, Freeman Lowell has surprising depth that the film only begins to explore.  His relationships to the drones - anthropomorphically performed by amuptees in costume - is at the core of the film’s message of mankind’s isolation, culminating in a climax that suggests maybe humans aren’t the best stewards their own legacy after all.  But did we really need a pair of Joan Baez songs to rub it in?

Arrow’s  brand-new 4K restoration from the original negative and looks just as terrific as you might expect.  Extras include a new audio commentary by Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw along with the archival original from Trumbull and Dern.  There are several other archival featurettes, trailers and interviews, but the most interesting new extra of the bunch is a visual essay that compares Michael Cimino’s original, darker version of the script with Steven Bochco’s kinder, gentler rewrite.  It’s a fascinating piece that includes artists renderings and voice actor performance of script selections to give audience’s an idea of what might have been.

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