Really Surprised!

Good idea lost in the noise

Expected more

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I saw this film first on a monochrome TV in the 1970s, when its moral premise - that saving other living beings might be worth more than human lives - appalled my late father. It produced a different effect on me - the first time my father's and my views had diverged significantly - and the doubt cast by the film on seeing human beings as the be-all and end-all of life has remained with ever since. At the time, I was a callow schoolboy; now I am a middle-aged father. So yes, this film has affected my views of life and the environment which sustains us. Whatever its technical and storytelling shortcomings, this is a profound film.

In the future, Earth has become an artificial world. The world's forests are in large pods in spaceships. They are on their way to replant the earth. Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) is a caretaker on the spaceship Valley Forge. His three other crewmates are callous to his natural ways. People no longer grow food. Then they receive orders to nuke the plants and cancel the trip. Lowell decides to revolt and kill his crew. Other ships wonder why the Valley Forge has not destroyed its forested pods.The story doesn't make sense. It may make poetic sense but this future world is ludicrous. Sometime these kinds of weird non-sense stories fill the old sci-fi publications. The problem is that they are not necessarily meant to be completely logical. One can ignore the illogical premise but as a movie, one can't ignore the lack of any tension. After killing the crew, the movie really goes nowhere. This could be adapted into a poignant Star Trek episode but it's not that compelling as a full-length release.

this review contains spoilers! its 1972 and the summer of love has been followed by the winter of the machine. what can a poor boy do? realising he is powerless in the face of the new world order, he drops out (hard 1970s style, not soft 1960s style) kills the local supporters of the status quo, retreats to his bedroom in the shadow of saturn (astrological reference), neglects the washing up and lets the pot plants wither away. he's been on the job looking after the terrarium for 8 years but he still hasn't learned that plants need sunlight to photosynthesise, duh. he talks to machines that can't talk back and imagines a response. he goes crazy. in the end he lets his dreams go, and commits suicide, in the process taking out the people who have tried to rescue him. his problem is that he's locked into a machine system which has no avenue of escape. he tries to save the plants with artificial life, ends up using the on-board Abomb to do himself in. his whole existence is predicated on the machines and he just can't deal with it. he's a hippy ideologue. read in this way its an OK story, but really, considering kubrick's 2001 was made some years before it, silent running is pretty lame. it has much more in common with the moralistic scifi movies of the 1950s and 60s, despite its groovy environmental themes (also pretty old hat by this time; rachel Carson's silent spring was published in 1962). and joan baez's sentimental quavering on the soundtrack is frankly unbearable.

OK I admit I have my rose-tinted spectacles handy when watching this brave little science fiction film but I still think that it remains pretty much a unique experience. It's rambling and inconsequential, has worn well but is dated, is corny yet relevant, and is enjoyable if too much isn't expected.Gargantuan spaceship has a lush ecosystem to preserve, until the order comes to blow it all up – tch, how short sighted Mankind always is! Bruce Dern as resident geeko-eco-warrior kills the remaining examples of Mankind on board and sets up his store with two stumpy robots Huey and Dewey. Sadly Louie didn't make it… The anthropomorphised robots and their relationship with Dern form the backbone of the movie. It goes off at odd tangents, but the big point is to Take Good Care Of The Forest. The three of them gave the best performances of their lives, only one of them saying anything and most of that comes across as unscripted. Probably the biggest drawback with the film was Joan Baez's dated manic warbling of hippy-drippy axioms always at the wrong moment; it made me cringe the first time I heard it in 1976, and gives the lie to the title. But even her music hasn't dated as badly as Blade Runner. The special effects were good although a lot of the props now remind me of 8-track cartridge players. There's no help for it, you must make allowances for all of that! And maybe it's good to remember that at this time of writing Mankind has not set foot on the Moon since those ancient primitive times either. The climax should be cringe-worthy too but isn't – the contrived poignancy is overwhelming by then. It's not one of the 1000 essential films to see before you die but it's worth watching because you won't see anything else quite like it; afterwards just try to think of a similar film.