Silent Running

A science fiction film set in space. There are no plants left on Earth. What forest remains has been put into enormous domes attached to cargo ships waiting in orbit around Saturn. One day, it is said, they will be brought back. Freeman Lowell works on one of those ships. He tends the forest, grows his own food and does not get on with the other three crew; for them it is a job of waiting. An order arrives: the domes are to be blown and the ships returned to commercial service. Lowell will not accept it. From there the film is about one man alone on a ship. All he has with him are three small maintenance robots. He names them, teaches them cards and talks to them. A practical problem appears in the second half: as the ship moves further from the Sun the light falls and the forest begins to die. Lowell is slow to understand why. What the film is interested in is loneliness as much as the environment: the man may be right, and what he has done leaves him entirely alone. The robots are performed by athletes who lost their legs, and the performances are built entirely from movement. The songs were sung by Joan Baez. Bruce Dern plays Lowell and the film rests almost entirely on him. Douglas Trumbull directed; he came from effects work and it is his first film as director. Who it is for: anyone who likes the calm science fiction of the 1970s and one-person narratives. Who it is not for: anyone expecting action; the film moves slowly and accepts the rightness of its character without any argument.