MovieChat Forums > Silent Running (1972) Discussion > Couple of questions

Couple of questions

posted 13 years ago by Welz82
1 reply | jump to latest

Watched this (for the 1st time) last night and enjoyed. It also looked really good on Blu-ray. Im yet to watch the making of, and Im not a fan of commentaries. Just wondering if the following are explained:-

*** SPOILERS!!! ***
1) How long was he in space for after losing contact with the other ship? It felt like a good while, but was it days, months, years?

2) I couldnt quite understand his choice to die onboard the main ship at the end. I can understand why he didnt want to go on living, due to what he had done to his crew, but why not go off into space in the forest dome he loved? If the environment couldnt sustain him, at least he'd of died there instead. Was it to destroy the ships logs and erase all evidence of what had actually happened? As he was clearly ashamed of what he did, and didnt appear to want to face justice. Again tho, couldnt he of just denoted the main ship remotely from the jettisoned dome, with the injured bot using the main ships controls. Did he just want a quick end? I kinda felt he wanted to avoid justice more than die, since he was happy to carry on until contact was made again.

[–] Alfabeta 12 years ago

1) As far as I could gather, his ship went around the dark side of Saturn, so I'd guess it must have taken him at least weeks, couple of months.

2) He blew himself up because return to the real world would have caused his guilt for killing the other men to return. Also, a world where all the green is dead (forever) is too damn depressive for him to live. Not to mention that he is not too young, has no family and after investing 8 full years in his life's work to be able to head the plant repopulation project he was just told that the epic gig was canceled, for good. Oh, and he was losing his mind alone with his forest.
"Things just didn't work out for him".