Space Oddity

By JAY COCKS

SILENT RUNNING Directed by DOUGLAS TRUMBULL Screenplay by DERIC WASHBURN, MIKE CIMINO and STEVE BOCHO

Some time near the turn of this century, in the threateningly near future, all vegetation on earth has died. Some plant life, however, has been preserved under geodesic domes carried in outer space aboard mammoth space freighters. This fleet has been cruising the skies for nearly a decade, caring for the vegetation and waiting for the order to come home.

When the call comes, there is an unexpected proviso: the ships must jettison their precious cargo. Earth is no longer interested; it has no more need for the domes' contents. The crews care only about getting home. They were all just on assignment anyway--all, that is, but one, a botanist named Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern), who dedicates himself to saving the forests. Lowell disobeys the order, clobbers one of his fellow crewmen with a garden spade and blows up two of the others. Alone save for the mechanical company of three robot-like drones, Lowell floats through space, hiding from the rest of the fleet and nurturing earth's last botanical heritage.

Bruce Dern makes Lowell into a kind of lovable yoyo, a combination of spaced-out Noah and perennial Eagle Scout. He anthropomorphizes his three drones, christening them Huey, Dewey and Louie, sews conservation patches all over his jumpsuit, and sings Smokey the Bear songs to himself as he bustles about the spaceship. Dern's exceptional performance brings more than a little humanity to the film.

Silent Running is a quite captivating essay on futuristic ecology that is possessed by the same simple-minded fer vor as its hero. At its worst moments, the film threatens to disintegrate into a marshmallow mawkishness, but it finally conquers its own obvious failures simply by being so sincere. Director Douglas Trumbull, making his first feature, may not yet be as proficient with scripts as he should be, but he has furnished some spectacular special effects.

He did some of the visual work on 2007, and Silent Running displays the same kind of technical virtuosity, the same sense of the still, vast symmetry of the galaxies.

In spite of its initial sentimentality, the film comes to an ending that is both hard-edged and poignant. To describe it would scarcely be fair, but it is a fit conclusion to a small, troubling and quietly memorable movie.

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