MovieChat Forums > Silent Running (1972) Discussion > Kinda charming but flawed

Kinda charming but flawed

posted 5 years ago by Drooch (5333)
4 replies | jump to latest

There was an innocence to the film that almost made me pity it, you sort of want to protect it from the big bad cynical world, like Dern treasuring a little leaf.

In some ways it’s more of a children’s film, and people like Mark Kermode and Edgar Wright who adore it saw it as children, which makes sense. But it does have a dark streak with multiple murder and suicide.

It seems like an eco propaganda film but the eco terrorist ends up crumbling with guilt - I can’t work out if it’s presenting a sophisticated moral dilemma, or they just made it up as they went along. In any case, Dern holds everything together with a great central performance.

There were some gaping flaws though - how the hell did a supposed high-ranking environmental expert not instantly get that the dying forest required sunlight? He spent days trying to solve the problem and ‘tried everything’ 🤦🏻‍♂️

Also, if the government wanted to nuke the domes, can’t they just locate the dome that Dern set free and blow it out of the stars with a rocket?

And why did they want to nuke the forests anyway? Why not let them float though space, or stick them on the moon?

[–] Owlwise (1535) 5 years ago

I saw it in the theater when it came out, loved it but even then noticed the logical flaws. However, that innocence to the film is the key, as it really is more of a parable than anything else, a cautionary tale about the fate of the natural world if every square inch is strip-mined & "developed" in the end. Right now scientists are warning of Sixth Great Extinction, with countless species dying, so the fears of the filmmaker were justified.

[–] liscarkat (18373) 5 years ago

The fears of the filmmaker were not really justified. The earth is in better shape now than it was in 1972. If you could revisit the planet a century, or a millennium from now, you would find it still teeming with plants and animals, nature thriving. Doom propaganda is a fool's pastime.

This was a fun movie, though, and I took it much more seriously when I was a naive eighteen-year-old.

[–] Drooch (5333) 5 years ago

Those ‘scientists‘ are trotting out the same climate doom-mongering we’ve been hearing for decades, and each time their apocalyptic predictions fail, and it hasn’t escaped my notice that their ‘solutions’ always look suspiciously like a Communist’s wish list, and they dismiss genuine alternatives like nuclear power.

The film might be a cautionary tale, but we’re not remotely heading in the direction it warns about.

[–] BourbonKing (5777) 5 years ago

I got a different impression. While I agreed with the character's sentiment that sustaining biological life was important I also saw that he was a zealot who couldn't see the forest from the trees, which is why the movie is more of a tragedy than a movie with an environmental message.