SILENT RUNNING

   Film (1971). Universal. Dir Douglas Trumbull, starring Bruce Dern. Screenplay Deric Washburn, Mike Cimino, Steve Bocho, from a story by Trumbull. 90 mins. Colour.

   All plant life on Earth has been destroyed in the aftermath of a nuclear HOLOCAUST; only vast orbiting spaceships like Valley Forge, with its external hydroponic domes, still contain trees andflowers, the hope being that these may one day be used to re-seed the planet; but then their destruction is ordered by the totalitarian Earth government. SR's premise is obviously fatuous - it would be cheaper to leave the spaceships in place. Bruce Dern plays, in penitent's robes, the only true conservationist left alive, a low-grade gardener aboard the Valley Forge. When the order comes through to dump the vegetation he killshis companions (with the film's tacit approval) and sets off into deep space with the plants (apparently forgetting they have previously needed sunlight to live). He is accompanied only by three small, cute, box-shaped ROBOTS (in fact operated by amputees). SR is occasionally spectacular -Trumbull was one of the special-effects supervisors on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), and SR's scenes of vast spaceships floating through space compare well with those in Stanley KUBRICK's epic - but the film is morally dubious, scientifically unsound and sociologically implausible.

   PN/JB