Silent Running

Directed by Douglas Trumbull, three-time Academy Award nominee for Best Visual Effects, “Silent Running” represents a decent example of a militant ecological-themed sci-fi film (the Joan Baez songs fit the theme) that conveys its environmental message with uncommon passion and intensity, at times even going overboard, given that the astronaut with the green thumb harbors beliefs that tend to result in extreme actions bordering on fanaticism.

Overall, you get the impression you’re watching an overly didactic and Manichean work (very telling in regard to the contrast between the bucolic labors of the protagonist and the heated forays of his motorized colleagues) whose intention is to point out the importance of nature for man’s equilibrium and creative spirit (“Do you realize how pitiful that is, what you just asked me? On Earth, everywhere you go, the temperature is seventy-five degrees. Everything is the same. All the people, are exactly the same. Now, what kind of life is that? […] There is no more beauty, there is no more imagination, and there are no frontiers left to conquer, and do you know why? […] Nobody cares“).

The gargantuan space domes are visually rather evocative.