Directed by Douglas Trumbull
It isn’t easy being green, especially not in the near-apocalyptic future of Douglas Trumbull’s visionary sci-fi masterpiece Silent Running, when the last remnants of plant life on Earth have been transplanted to giant ships and launched into space until the planet can be made hospitable to nature again. Aboard the hi-tech ark "Valley Forge," botanist Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) lovingly tends to the flora and fauna beneath majestic bio-domes like a futuristic Francis of Assisi. But when orders come that the celestial forests are to be destroyed, Lowell takes matters into his own hands risking both his life and his sanity to save the environment. A provocative and fascinating exploration of humanity’s capacity for both self-destruction and salvation, Silent Running carried the tradition of thoughtful science fiction cinema into the 1970s before Star Wars blasted the genre into a more action-oriented orbit.
Universal Pictures. Producer: Michael Gruskoff, Douglas Trumbull. Screenwriter: Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino, Steven Bochco. Cinematographer: Charles F. Wheeler. Editor: Aaron Stell. Cast: Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint, Mark Persons.
Blu-ray, color, 89 min.
