Silent Running - 1972
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Silent Running (1972)
I remember seeing this movie for the first time . It was in the late 1970s and I was a mere child . What a sad film SILENT RUNNING was . It touched my very soul and I went to bed with tears in my eyes . I saw it again today and I have to say it's incredibly cheesy . Talk about mouldy cheese !
SILENT RUNNING feels like a substandard Disney film mixed up with a Steven Seagall environmental thriller . It's also very strange watching Bruce Dern play an eco-warrior . Throughout the late 70s Dern found himself being type cast as OTT psychotic villains , every time some Hollywood producer wanted to make a movie about a nutter who was a Vietnam vet Dern would always be at the top of the list and it's impossible to think of him as anything but a bad guy , though having said that Dern's character Freeman ( What a deep name - YAWN ) isn't the archetypal tree hugging yogurt knitting environmentalist , he's more of a " greeniac " who also likes to dress up as Jesus . Oh and seems unaware that lack of sunlight causes leaves on trees to fall off . Typical environmentalist - He thinks he knows about nature but is totally ignorant about simple stuff like seasons
It's also a very manipulative film where the audience's sympathy is made to lie with three robots rather than - Freeman aside - the other human characters , the idea being that machines with human qualities are somehow better than real people . I've met lots of real people and the one sub culture I dislike intensely are environmentalists . The script also talks down to the audience . Freeman presses a computer keyboard and a tray of processed food comes out . He turns to the sweet little robots and says " I know . I've been eating this for too long . Let's go into the forest for some real food " where he hopefully kills some animals to make a big mac , and when you consider the content of this movie there's a life time of cheese burgers here
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