Special effects maestro Douglas Trumbull made his directorial debut with this offbeat, cautionary tale of a potential ecological catastrophe destroying all plant life on Earth and the space age remedies set in place to hopefully reverse the trend in the future. Bruce Dern is one of several lone caretakers on a remote space freighter equipped with geodesic greenhouse domes cultivating species of vegetation that will eventually be reintroduced to their home planet. It is a lonely life, with three other crewmen and three drone robots for company. Unlike his fellow humans aboard, Dern is a man on a mission, and when orders arrive from Earth to detach the domes and destroy them, the conflicted Dern decides to defy the commands. His rebellion ends in the deaths of his fellow crewmen and a wild, bumpy off course ride through Saturn’s rings to flee into deep space. Flying by the seat of his pants, improvising from one day to the next, unexpected problems surface, the most serious when another freighter contacts him to find out the status of their return trip to Earth, something that may precipitate a crisis where he will need to make the ultimate sacrifice – himself. Michael Cimino co-wrote the screenplay with Deric Washburn and Steven Bochco.
“A movie out of the ordinary — especially if you like science fiction.” – Roger Ebert
“Silent Running’s strength is in the elegant way it combines its big idea with a very human story… very different from the action and morally straightforward heroics we’ve come to associate with the genre… its special effects have dated well. Director Douglas Trumbull had previously worked as special effects supervisor on 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it was in that capacity that he started developing the Saturn sequences seen here.” – Jennie Kermode, Eye for Film
