Silent Running (1972)

 

100 best Science Fiction films

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#92. Silent Running (1972)

 

 “…in Wildness is the preservation of the World.”

n William David Thoreau

 

“On this first day of a new century, we humbly beg forgiveness and dedicate these last forests of our once beautiful nation to the hope that they will one day return and grace our foul Earth. Until that day may God bless these gardens and the brave men who care for them.”

n Fleet Commander Anderson (an uncredited voice-over by Roy Engel early in the film)

 

Introduction: The birth of modern Environmentalism

 

“Deforestation” was a big environmental buzz word in the 1980s. The word itself doesn’t loom quite as large today, but not because we’ve forgotten about it, instead it was absorbed into other, better considered, language, namely “Habitat Destruction,” “Biodiversity” and “Sustainability.” These terms are really umbrellas, and under these umbrellas, Deforestation is still the biggest issue.

 

But it should be noted we weren’t talking about such things much until only a short-time before the 1980s, if we look back more than sixty-years-ago, environmentalism was there, but anemic. It was not until after the publication of Rachel Carson’s landmark Non-Fiction book “Silent Spring” (1962) that the Environmentalist Movement in the USA become powerful, a movement that quickly became so large and influential that even compelled Republican President Richard Nixon to become an Environmental Hero, advocating for the Clean Air Act and signing the Executive Order that created the Environmental Protection Agency (both 1970, during that momentous year there was also the very first Environmental Rights Day and Earth Day); but wouldn’t you know, even after that, the Liberals still hated Nixon.

 

But in SF, except for fears of Nuclear Fallout, Man’s willful abuse of Earth’s Environment, maybe it be Pollution or Habit Destruction, were strangely absent until after Carson’s book, more proof that the allegedly forward-looking literature is actually kind of reactionary. In SF cinema, “Silent Running,” isn’t the absolute first SF film reflecting the new-born Movement, there were earlier films that touched on it, and “No Blade of Grass” (1970) make it central, but “Silent Running” had an activist agenda absent in all that came previously, and therein lies the film’s importance, and its flaws.

 

This was Douglas Trumbull’s most explicit follow-up to “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), the film that established him as one of the greatest FX Masters who ever lived (“2001 …” earned him his first Oscar, but contentiously, because Director Stanley Kubrick took full credit, subbing Trumbull and his extraordinary team). With “Silent Running,” Trumbull didn’t just do the FX, but took on several wholly new jobs, Writer of the original story treatment, Producer and Director, and he was only 29-years-old at the time. This project was clearly, deeply, personal to him, he wanted this film to advance beyond “2001 …” by being it more humanistic, intimate, and to explore more immediate issues, and he succeeded on all counts.

 

Chapter One: The setting and setup

 

The initial spark seemed to be that the “2001 …” had taken place in Jupiter’s orbit even though Author Arthur C. Clarke and Kubrick’s preferred location was Saturn, because at the time visualizing Saturn in a manner worthy of the epic was a bit beyond Trumbull’s skills.

 

In its earliest form, this film’s plot had little-or-no Environmentalism in it and also had Aliens that are absent in the final product. Still, what evolved later demonstrated an unusual commitment to this quickly evolving political cause; it’s explicitly about Deforestation, how Human choices not only created it, but how further choices will decide what happens next.

 

It’s set in the then-future year of 2008 and the Space Program is even farther advanced than the one Trumbull built for “2001 …” and both were more advanced than the Real-World of 2022. Planet Earth has also been shockingly transformed by human hands, purged of all its forests, not by indifference, but deliberate choice, to make it livable in some new way that we don’t get to see because the film is entirely Space-Ship bound. We are told the mountains and valleys have been leveled, the temperature is remarkably consistent, and the economy is thriving. Earth no longer has any need of Nature’s checks-and-balances, therefore there’s no room for Nature. To quote the film, “There's hardly any more disease, there's no more poverty, no-one's out of a job."

 

I can’t imagine how such a circumstance would be even remotely Sustainable, and apparently, I’m not alone: even in the script, some forward-thinking guys in the Military/Industrial Complex decide to preserve the remaining trees, bunny rabbits, and other stuff, on three giant Green-House-Space-Ships, really three Freighters that had four Arboretums retrofitted onto each them. They are owned by American Airlines, so kudos for Trumbull; in “2001…” there’s a Space Ship was owned by Pan Am, which went bankrupt in 1991, but American Airlines is still with us today.

 

These Ships orbit Saturn, just on the odd-chance that Earth’s artificially-achieved equilibrium goes off the rails and the forests are needed again. The images of Saturn are as breathe-taking as one would expect, Trumbull’s deep love of his craft is always captivating. He was much-aided by Cinematographer Charles F. Wheeler, a previous Oscar nominee.

 

Though the conceit hinges on the absurd, but doesn’t quite go over the edge. That will remain the main challenge for the film-makers throughout the movie, how to dance on the edge and not fall. Unfortunately, eventually, they do.

 

Our main character, Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern), is the Chief Astro-Botanist on the Valley Forge. He’s an insecure, but wildly committed, a Hippy who’s constantly annoying his three fellow Shipmates, John Keenan (Cliff Potts), Marty Barker (Ron Rifkin), and Andy Wolf (Jesse Vint), who are nearly-interchangeable characters. Freeman has “The Conservationist's Pledge” next to his bunk and sings to himself, "Take a tip from Smokey/There is nothing like a tree." He grows his own food while his Ship Mates prefer processed cubes dispensed by machine; they consider his messy cantaloupes disgusting. Of course, he finds his shipmates disgusting too:

 

Lowell: “Look at this crap! Look at that! Dried, synthetic crap! And you’ve become so dependent on it that I bet you can’t live without it.”

 

One of his crewmates: “Why would we want to, Lowell?”

 

In other words, Freeman is the only one who really belongs there. We’re given a context so extreme that it’s impossible not to side with annoying Freeman, but this set-up is not as pedantic as it might sound, Freeman’s personality difficulties are foreshadowing. Though we’re given no choice but to side with him, when he soon goes berserk, the film leaves us with some really tough questions about the justifications of Terrorism.

 

This is a weirdly intimate Space Epic, though relying heavily on its FX scenes, featuring a hair-raising escape and a handful of Nuclear Explosions, Trumbull achieves a miraculously leisurely pace by being more focused on day-to-day activities in an Artificial Environment. In this, the film is masterfully Directed, because the running time is a mere 89 mins, yet a lot happens in that short time. I’ve often noted that there’s a magic in Directors who understand pacing, they can linger more on silences, but still somehow squeeze in more story-telling than most big Epics that are wall-to-wall action and run more-than two hours.

 

The film opens with a snail creeping slowly along a green leaf, deftly synched with the instrumental soundtrack by the famous musical-comedian P.D.Q. Bach, but since this score is not his usual parody-work, he’s credited under his real name of Peter Schickele. Then the camera pans revealing more plants and animals and eventually that the forest is inside an Arboretum. Freeman is introduced, first swimming in a pond, then dressed somewhat like a monk, tending the flora and fauna.

 

The idyllic scene is rudely interrupted by the intrusion of three ATVs driven by his crewmates who are clearly doing nothing but obnoxiously joy-riding. Lowell loses his temper at them because they are damaging the plants. It is only after this that we hear the voice-over I quoted above, and only after that is it revealed that we’re on a Space Ship.

 

The set-up is clear and economical and mounting details of daily-life re-enforce it. In addition to Lowell and his crewmates we are also introduced to three appealing Robots who, quite impressively, are not anthropomorphized, but still quite adorable in their clumsy, but still effective, functionality. These Robots would prove to be the highlights of the film -- short, squat and two legged, but without heads, faces, or arms (though they can extend tools from their core casings), and they speak only in the language of electronic tones (they were played by four double-amputees, Mark Persons, Larry Whisenhunt, Cheryl Sparks and Steven Brown). Their influence on the design of R2D2 from “Star Wars” (1976) was acknowledged by Writer/Director George Lucas.

 

Chapter Two: The crisis

 

Before long, the crisis emerges. The Powers-that-Be have determined the cost of maintaining these massive ships is not profitable, and to a degree they are right, preservation is almost never profit-generating, nor are most essential public services. Law Enforcement, Fire Departments, Public Schools and the Postal Service should never be viewed as Income Generators, but increasingly, in the Real-World, there is attempts to treat them that way. Since the 1990s the increasing pressure to Privatize the Postal Service has left it in ruins. In Law Enforcement, the making the Cops in Ferguson, Missouri, responsible for generating a third of the town’s operating budget played no small role in the violence there during 2014 and that received National Attention.

 

Anyway, Commander Anderson reaches out to his Fleet:

 

“We have just received orders… to abandon, then nuclear destruct all the forests… and return our ships to commercial service. I have received no explanation, and we must begin at 0900 in the morning. May God have mercy on us all.”

 

Lowell can’t accept this, “I don’t think you guys understand what this means. Please don’t blow up the domes… they’re not disposable… they’re not replaceable.”

 

But his crewmates are thrilled, because this assignment has been really boring for them, now they will finally be going home.

 

Freeman continues to hector them, saying they’ll, “never gonna be able to see the simple wonder of a leaf in her hand… because there’s not gonna be any trees.”

 

They respond, “If people were interested, something would have been done a long time ago.”

 

Chapter Three: The sympathetic Terrorist

 

One by one, the three Ship Fleet obey the orders. On the Valley Forge, two of the four Green-Houses are destroyed. This is too much for Freeman. He murders all of his shipmates and sacrifices another Green-House to save the very last one, Earth’s final forest.

 

Now we need to stop and consider, Freeman not only defied orders, committed a crime, he also murdered three innocents. Paul Gilster compared Freeman going berserk to the conflict in the heart of Henry David Thoreau, a famously Pacifistic Political Activist, but who was also an admirer of the most famous Terrorist in US history, John Brown, which Thoreau spelled out in, “A Plea for Captian John Brown” (1859), “Was it wrong for Lowell to kill Keenan, Barker, and Wolf in order to save a forest, even if it was the last one left in their existence? Was it wrong for the majority of humanity in ‘Silent Running’ to literally trash the planet of their birth and be eager to exterminate the final traces of its biosphere because they put more value in commerce than life itself? Was it wrong for Thoreau to advocate open rebellion when more pacifist methods fail as he did in his commentary on John Brown, especially if it means sacrificing a relatively small amount of people in order to save millions of others?”

 

The film sides with Freeman close to unconditionally.

 

Now Freeman must make his escape, that’s where the title comes in. He cons the Fleet into believing he’s lost control of the Valley Forge, and that it will crash into the rings of Saturn and likely be destroyed.  Anderson, the never seen, but a strikingly Environmentalist Military man who regrets his orders, tells Freeman, “You’re a hell of an American.”

 

Freeman: “Thank you, sir. I think I am.”

 

Freeman executes his wild escape, diving into the rings, faking is own death, and moving his green-house even farther out into the Solar System, but accidently destroying one of the Robots in the process. Freeman expresses more grief of that loss for the Robot than the three Human’s he deliberately murdered.

 

Chapter four: A few Scientific Errors, more to come

 

There are some Scientific errors I want to call attention to, for no other reason than it’s fun:

 

Freeman had, in his head, anthropomorphized the drones, changing their names from “One,” Two,” and “Three” to “Huey,” Dewy,” and “Louie” (the three nephews of the Disney animated character Donald Duck, who started appearing in cartoon shorts in 1937). He also reprogramed them to be more like humans but it is obvious to (at least some of us) he doesn’t really have the technical skill to do that. Never-the-less, the Robots started to subtly display what appeared to be human emotions (he teaches them to play poker and they quickly learn to cheat). Have the Robots bizarrely achieved something akin to “Singularity”? That’s is a term coined by SF Writer and working Scientist Vernor Vinge in 1993, wherein self-driven technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, machine intelligence emerges on its own, and in the process, Humanity is left behind.

 

Or maybe, the script just embraced the audience’s assumptions about the genre for the sake of narrative economy.

 

The script also doesn’t try to explain the Valley Forge’s comfortable Artificial Gravity because SF films almost never do that.

Lowell tells Anderson that the Valley Forge will “hit the northeastern quadrant of Saturn’s outer ring,” but as the rings stretch around the Planet’s equator, there’s no northeastern quadrant.

 

Also, the collision is demonstrated as flying through a blizzard, which might have been reasonable enough based on 1968 Science (when “2001 …” was released, but in 1970 Radar Surveys learned far more about the composition, the rings are made ice and rock and boulders, averaging three feet across, some bigger than houses, meaning that a ship moving at Valley Forge’s velocity would’ve been doomed. Of course, by then, this production would’ve already been green-lighted, and a little thing like Reality is never enough to demand such a massive rewrite.

 

 

Chapter Five: Another crisis

 

Freeman proceeds with a “Silent Running,” a term from Submarine Warfare, to evade capture as the Military searches for him. He’s also is beset by two new crises, the first one is that he feels guilty and lonely. Second, his forests are suddenly dying and he doesn’t know why.

 

Regarding the first crisis, which emerged even before his flight through Saturn’s rings. Dern is an actor of great subtly and perfect in this part, in fact, he’s better when isolated than when badgering his crewmates earlier in the film. And interesting aspect is that he’s mostly clearly descending into madness, not before the killings, but after. I think that was pretty observant, because most Terrorists don’t display diagnosable Mental Illnesses.

 

Dern is so good, he entered a problematic club of fine actors who did really good work playing unstable Villains and complete Psychos, so they started getting stuck with that work, even though they knew they should be doing something else. More flamboyant actors with a serio-comic style, let’s say Vincent Price or Boris Karloff, often embraced their type-casting (Price said, “The nice thing about type-casting is that you know they want you”). Others, with more obvious range, like Anthony Perkins, Sam Neil, and Christopher Walken, have good cause to be a little annoyed. Dern even complained/joked about this in a monologue on “Saturday Night Live” (TV show first aired in 1975, this was part of Dern’s second hosting in 1983). The importance of that monologue to this essay is that, despite Critical endorsement, “Silent Running” initially, financially, failed, yet by the time Dern showed up on SNL, it was already a cult-hit frequently seen on TV.

 

The character Freeman never really articulates his grief and guilt, but instead starts mimicking the actions of his dead crewmates: He starts eating the synthetic foodstuffs and joyriding in an ATV. While joyriding, he crashes into Huey. Freeman does incomplete and inadequate repairs on his “friend,” but during the film’s last act, Dewy is the ship’s only remaining, fully functional, Robot.

Chapter Six: Yet another crisis, and another scientific error.

The second crisis, the plants in the Arboretums dying, is even more serious; it also proves to be the script’s Scientific worst goof.

 

Freeman can’t solve the mystery of the die-off, and finds no answers while pouring over the Big Grey Book, which is the Astro-Botanist’s main Technical Manual. When the mystery is revealed, the audience had the right to guffaw because it turns out that as Freeman moved too far from the Sun, the plants were not getting enough light to support Photo-Synthesis.

 

The fact that it wasn’t obvious, or that even Saturn, like Jupiter, was too far away from the Sun for terrestrial plants, should demonstrate that alleged-Botanist Freeman would’ve been a losing contestant on “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?” (TV game show, first aired in 2007, so the year before this story were supposed to take place). Though Freeman’s ignorance of the Inverse Ratio Law is an obvious absurdity, and publicly mocked by Working Scientist and Writer Carl Sagan

 

Yes, this is pretty sloppy … or maybe not.

 

Chapter Seven: When the Machine Stops

 

 

One of the strengths of this film is the economy of storytelling, but that makes it almost inevitable that a lot of stuff landed on the cutting room floor. Though I’ve researched the production, I can’t find much about the writing process except that the three guys responsible for the final script, Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino, and Steven Bochco, were a talented group.

 

Washburn and Cimino would work together again on powerful Vietnam War film “The Deer Hunter” (1978). Washburn would then move on to a few more respected, but not massively popular, Crime films. Unfortunately, Cimino would move onto a string of embarrassments, notably “Heaven’s Gate” (1980), a massive disaster that earned the reputation of being the film that ended all hope of creativity in Hollywood (not really true, but that’s how the story usually gets told). The most successful of the trio was Bochco, who would soon transform TV with a sting of hugely successful, exceptionally well-written, Police and Legal dramas.

 

But there might be a little more going on here than meets the eye.

 

No, really, I’m not just making excuses.

 

Or, at least I hope not.

 

Way back in 1909, SF was hugely popular, though still un-named (that won’t happen until 1926), with best-selling authors whose reputations were built on that kind of Speculation in England, France, Germany, and the USA. Towering above them all was H.G. Wells, and though his early novels were often Dystopian and combined SF with Horror, the bulk of his Fiction and Non-Fiction leaned towards the Utopian, or at least it did until the outbreak of WWI and later rise of Fascism soured him. Most often Wells expressed the belief in the Perfectibility of Man and that Scientific Achievement and Reasoning would liberate us all.

 

There was another Author, of near-equal popularity, E.M. Forster, who thought it was all poppycock. E. M. Forster was more Conservative in Wells in many and more Liberal in others. One thing that strongly separated the two men was Socialist Wells’ belief that there was a Natural Aristocracy would ultimately Rule (Wells didn’t like the hereditary Aristocracy of England though, he deemed them unnatural); while Forster’s work, which mostly about, and sympathetic to, the English Upper Classes, was always conscious of the oppressions of Class-Stratification and other Prejudices. An even more striking difference between the two was their views of Technology, Wells loved most of it, while Forster was a pastoralist, disgusted with what the Industrial Revolution had done to England’s green and pleasant land.

 

Forster’s only SF was the novella, “When the Machine Stops” (1909), and Forster was quite explicit that it was an attack on Wells’ Utopian visions. As I said above, there was damned little Environmental SF before 1962, but “When the Machine …” was an exception to that rule of towering importance.

 

Forster’s speculations were remarkable, he was writing in a world without Electronic Computers and Sound Recording having just been invented, but still envisioned things that were much like the Internet and piped-in Muzac. He argued that the seductions of comfort were so powerful that they, not force, were the ultimate tools of oppression. He has his humanity living underground without creativity or ambition, and when one Rebel dares go to the surface, what he sees almost perfectly matches how Earth is described in “Silent Running.”

 

Forster’s vision of a drab, anti-individualistic future, is echoed in Freeman’s rants, “Everywhere you go, the temperature is 75 degrees. Everything is the same. All the people are exactly the same. What kind of life is that? … there is no more beauty, and there’s no more imagination. And there are no frontiers left to conquer. And you know why? Only one reason why… nobody cares.”

 

The part of the novella that my mind most returns to is the description of the new Bible. It is actually a Technical Manual, and everyone gets a slightly different one. This reflects the increasing specification needed to maintain the increasingly complex Machine, and that things have come to a tipping point-that wherein no one really understands how the whole of the Machine actually works. As no one can see more than parts of it, no one can correct a major crisis, only preform patchwork repairs. To me, this sounds a lot like Freeman’s lack of understanding of basic Botany, and the uselessness of the Grey Book.

 

Finally, one day, the accumulating, unaddressed, problems within the Machine spiral out-of-control – The Machine Stops, and everyone dies.

 

(Note: I’m on the Internet every day. I typed this essay up on a WP, I’ve even taken a few courses in Computer repair. Fuck-all if I know how any of this shit works.)

 

I see that in this film, though not as well spelled-out as it should’ve been. Looking at “Silent Running” as a prequel to “When the Machine …” the most serious narrative goofs wash away.

 

Am I making excuses for it? Maybe, maybe not. Not only is “When the Machine …” a cornerstone of SF, it is also considered one of the finest novellas of any genre written in the English language. It’s not possible that all three scripters were unaware of it, in fact all three probably read it in school.

 

Chapter Eight: One more crisis

 

The ending is both romantic and bleak.

 

The Military finds Freeman and the Rescue Ship is mere hours away. After it docks, everything Freeman has fought for will be lost.

 

Freeman comes up with another desperate, border-line irrational, plan. He stays aboard the Freighter with damaged Huey, while jettisoning the Earth’s final forest with Dewy, in a direction that no one will chase it. He then detonates the last Nuke on the Freighter, saving the last forest and committing suicide for the cause of Conservation. Freeman’s last words are, “When I was a kid, I put a note into a bottle, and it had my name and address on it. And then I threw the bottle into the ocean. And I never knew if anybody ever found it.”

 

It’s painfully obvious that there’s little chance that forest will be recovered. The final image is of Dewy, all alone in the Universe, tending a flower with a battered child's watering-can.

 

Chapter Nine: Reactions, FX, and legacies

 

As I stated above, the film received mostly positive reviews, but failed financially. Retrospective reviews remain mostly positive, but more likely to point-out the flaws I described above. Another thing the retrospective reviews are more likely to complain about is Joan Baez’s two folk-songs about plants and sunshine. In the 1970s, people were loving that stuff, but for me, that woman’s pandering poop is like nails being drawn against a black-board; I say Bob Dylan is only alive today because he got rid of her. P.D.Q. Bach’s score is excellent, but Baez’s contribution deserves to be jettisoned out an Air-lock.

 

I don’t think even the film’s harshest critic can complain about the FX; it was landmark then, still excellent-looking today. Trumbull had only 10% of the budget to work with when he went out to out-do his Oscar-winning Achievement of “2001 …” and he pulled it off. He FX crew were all newbies, so they came cheap, but they were talented and had his guiding hand. One of them, John Dykstra, would grow up to be a Master to rival Trumbull, and earned his first Oscar for “Star Wars” (1977).

 

There are some obvious reasons for Trumbull being able to do so much for so little (smaller cast, not trying to simulate Zero-Gravity, not having anything like “2001 …” Stargate sequence) but, for me, the coolest part was how Trumbull approached the sets.

Freeman’s Space Ship, the Valley Forge, was named after an Aircraft Carrier that had served the Navy from WWII through Vietnam, but by the early 1970s had been mothballed. There were attempts to convert it into a museum, but that failed, and when this film went into production, the real Ship was awaiting being sold for scrap metal -- that was where Trumbull filmed. The massive sets of the Green-Houses were created on the hanger deck, and the other sets were barely-modified versions of the corridors, crew quarters, and bridge, so kudos to Production Manager Marty Hornstein and Set Decorator Frank Lombardo.

 

Trumbull was cheated out of an Oscar once again. “Silent Running” should’ve been a shoe-in for Best FX, but that award was inconsistently given back in those days and no-one at all received it in 1973. In a few other categories it deserved at least nominations, like Score, Cinematography, Score, and Art Direction/Production Design (so Hornstein and Lombardo) though it was unlikely to win any of those given how strong the competition was (this was the same year as “The Exorcist,” “The Way We Were,” and “The Sting”).

 

This wasn’t Trumbull’s last outing as Director, but his continued struggles to get projects off-the-ground embittered him. His only other feature-length film, “Brainstorm” (1983) was supposed to feature some really bold new FX and camera technology, but while it lingered in Development Hell, the most ambitious aspects of the production were scrapped by Producers. When the lead actress died before Primary Shooting was completed, he found himself pushed out of the production altogether, and gave up on Directing completely. Trumbull then applied “Brainstorm’s” scrapped technology, called Showscan to Amusement Park rides.

 

On the other hand, as an FX man, his career kept getting better-and-better; when the Best FX Oscar started being handed out more regularly, he was nominated frequently and picked up two Special Achievement Oscars (one for the Showscan he wasn’t able to use in “Brainstorm”) as well as numerous awards from other institutions.

 

Model of the Valley Forge was 25-feet-long and proved too fragile to be moved or stored, so it was dismantled, but it still appeared via borrowed footage in other productions, like an episode of “Night Gallery” (TV series first aired in 1970, the Space Ship appeared in the 1971 episode, “The Different Ones”) that was aired a few months before “Silent Running” was released. It was repeatedly shown in “Battlestar Galactica” (TV series first aired in 1978).

 

As suggested in my first paragraph, the film’s main moral issue, Deforestation, is still a central to Environmentalism, though now most commonly spoken of under other names. In 2019 & 2020, fires in the Amazon Rain Forest (the world’s largest forest) were allowed to rage out-of-control because of the indifference of the brutish President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, and this threatens to accelerate Global Warming. In January 2021, Bolsonaro’s equally-brutish ally, Donald Trump, was finally removed from Presidency of the USA, leaving Joe Biden the monumental task of rebuilding the Environmental Protection Agency that Trump deliberately gutted in favor of short-term economic gains. In March 2021, the Rainforest Foundation Norway released an analysis which demonstrated that human activities, mostly logging and land-use changes, have already destroyed 34% of old-growth tropical rainforests and degraded another 30% worldwide (degraded forests as those that are partly destroyed or fully-wiped out but replaced by more recent growth).

 
Wouldn’t have been nice if this Activist film had become l irrelevant thirty-two-years after its release and nineteen-years after the then-future date it was predicting?

 

Yes, it would’ve. But that’s not what happened.

 

Trailer:

Silent Running - Trailer - YouTube