I saw him as a means to the end, the true heroes were the drones he programmed they maintained the place. After he resorted to murder he lost any chance of being any hero.
shareFreeman Lowell is not a clear cut hero: His cause is right, his methods questionable. Even his mental state leads him to homicide and mania. I think this is deliberate on the part of the writers (and Bruce Dern's performance).
Lowell considers himself to be a new Adam in the Garden of Eden, or at least Able. However, in killing his crewmates (even the one who is most sympathetic towards him), he turns out to be Cain. Lowell comes to realise this and that is why his act of atonement is eventually suicide. He has blood on his hands and so he entrusts the care of the forest to an innocent droid instead of saving himself.
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I know. This is such a troubling story. Silent Running has influenced my thoughts from an early age, but I have never worshipped Lowell as a hero. I support the suggestion that the drones might be lone heroes of this tale, perhaps by default. They are also the only ones who elicit some pathos. Lowell is not stable, and doesn't even possess the knowledge that we demand of an exo-arborist. I saw that as a kid watching this. In retrospect, I wish they had written a different story. Nonetheless, the message of us losing our natural resources forever profoundly affected my outlook, just like that old American commercial about pollution with the Native American and his iconic tear -- imperfect, but effective.
shareEven though Lowell has lofty and noble ideas, he is a human who succumbed to his base instincts and killed people. The last droid is an innocent: It becomes the best custodian of the last forest because it has none of the destructive faults of mankind. The movie's ultimate conclusion is that man has now broken apart from nature and nature cannot survive with the presence of man.
It's a movie that provokes thought, I'll give it that. It's more a metaphor than hard sci-fi (I mean, how does humanity survive and cope in a world with no wilderness or vegetation?). As one character mentions "what's the problem? Everyone has a job, there's no poverty..." This is a reference to those arguments that are made whenever an area of wilderness or nature is demolished to make way for commerce "think of the jobs and prosperity this will bring" so Trumbull and his colleagues have taken that local idea and expanded it into a sci-fi metaphor.
This is what a good sci-fi movie should have: Ideas, metaphors, a strong story, good effects, good acting and yet Silent Running is a movie I admire more than I like.
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Anyone else think it was a dick move to kill the damaged bot along with himself? Knowing they had some sentience and cared for each other, why not leave the bots together? Even after getting his big realization of his wrong doings, he makes awful choices. No, you can't live on in the dome because you're no longer useful.
shareVery true. I never thought of it like that! It makes for an impactful ending knowing that the droid is all alone looking after the forest! Love it all.
shareFreeman Lowell is the hero of this movie like Michael Myers in the hero of Halloween.
shareI can't see robots as heroes. They are merely operating on programs. One could say that Lowell's shipmates were just as robotic as the drones. In which case, is Lowell's killing any worse than aborting a program when preserving the last species of fauna and flora?
I'm not an environmental wacko. I don't put trees above human life- under normal conditions. But I have to think that if someone were to destroy the last of the known works of Rembrandt or Van Gogh, I'd kill them in a heartbeat and not even think twice about it.
I'm sure that's how Lowell viewed the arbors- as the last known works, the magnificent masterpieces, of their creator. I think he had a moral obligation to preserve them.
My "#3" key is broken so I'm putting one here so i can cut & paste with it.
I had pretty much the same feeling. He was in some ways a sympathetic main character and in some ways not but not a hero.
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