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From: leeper@ahutb.UUCP (m.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Best Movie ("Silent Running" or "Running Silent?")
Message-ID: <622@ahutb.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Apr-85 19:42:32 EST
Article-I.D.: ahutb.622
Posted: Wed Apr  3 19:42:32 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Apr-85 03:49:55 EST
References: <449@qumix.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
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 >I really have to many 'BEST' movie's to pick just one though
 >I am rather surprised to see no mention of the movie "Silent
 >Running" (or was it "Running Silent"?)  with Bruce Dern and
 >his three robots Huey,Duey,and Luey.

I have a really good reason for not mentioning SILENT RUNNING among the
best of science fiction films.  I dislike it.  At times very much.
There was a film that came out in 1971 called BILLY JACK.  At the time
it struck a responsive chord and lot's of people liked it very much.
Those same people look at the film today totally aghast!  Both BILLY
JACK and SILENT RUNNING are films that preach to horribly -- and only
to the converted.  They both pander to a particular political viewpoint
that people could groove on when they came out without thinking too
much about the content.  In SILENT RUNNING we learn that the meanies on
earth years ago sent all of the forests into orbit.   For a piece of
ecological science fiction it stops to think very little about what the
ecological effect on Earth would be without the plant life and instead
make a sentimental appeal that the forests and all the dewy-eyed
animals are gone.  There is no explanation as to what people are
breathing these days on old Mother Earth with all the trees in space.
In any case, just in case somebody in the future gets nostalgic for the
days when Earth had oxygen, they keep the forests alive by shooting
them into space and having a bunch of not-very-dedicated space cadets
tend the forests.  

Then those nasty earth people decide to use of the last of their oxygen
burning their bridges behind them.  The ships cost too much to
maintain, they have to be nuked.  It is a heck of a lot cheaper to
jettison the forests in the direction of the sun, or away, where they
will not be a hazard to navigation, but nasties and nuking go together
so all the forests and the sweet dewy-eyed animals have to be nuked.
How much would it cost to let the forests run themselves, as one person
figures out at a different point of the film, not one red penny.
Automatic systems could maintain the forests on solar power,
apparently, but there is not one scientist on Earth who thinks of that
before the last of the forests is nuked.  They apparently are all hot
to see the fireworks display.

Ah, but one ecologist rebels.  Freeman Lowell -- even the name is corny
-- decides to rebel and take his forest away from the sun and out to
the orbit of Saturn.  There the forest seems to mysteriously get sick.
Can you guess why a forest that was healthy in Earth's orbit might get
sick out in Saturn's orbit?  Ecologist Freeman Lowell can't.  Not for a
long time, anyway.

I guess this is a film with its heart in the right place, but it was
just stupid.  I like trees and I am an animal rights advocate.  But
dammit, this film makes a studid argument by saying wouldn't it be sad
if these things were gone.  Friend, it wouldn't be sad 'cause you need
oxygen to be sad.  You ain't got oxygen, you ain't gonna be around to
miss the chipmunks.  A filmmaker who tells you that the reason to
protect the environment is just to save the pretty trees and animals is
being criminally irresponsible.  (I really expect someone to pop up at
this point and say that maybe the Earthlings are getting their oxygen
from moss or something.  I think that currently a fair proportion of
our oxygen comes from things SILENT RUNNING is claiming are going away.
Even in the dubious possibility that a stable eco-system is possible
based on other sources of oxygen, you can't get there from here without
a whole lot of disruption that would probably kill off old Homo Saps
anyway.)

Joan Baez sang the song under the credits which seems somehow fitting.
That is not an attack on her (though I really dislike her for other
reasons).  It is just that she, like this film, tends to appeal to
people's emotions rather than their reasoning.  The music was pretty
good, written by Peter Schickle who is better known for P. D. Q. Bach
tours.  The robots were played by bi-lateral amputees, incidently, and
it is good that they could find work.  Still none of these positive
points outweighs the major faults of the story.

				Mark Leeper
				...ihnp4!ahutb!leeper