The Worst Film Ever

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I saw this at school during a summer program. The school would let the kids come in and watch several movies for a few coins as part of a summer program (to keep us out of our parents' hair, presumably) and this was part of the lineup.Personally, I was blown away and the details have stayed with me. When I saw the movie again as an adult some years ago, I got the same message, felt the same feelings, in short, it has stayed with me in a way few movies have ever done. The only other movie to affect me this profoundly in my childhood was "Star Wars." I don't know how it will stand up to modern audiences. Probably not as well as the Star Wars franchise has. But this movie will be an important part of my childhood memories and my creativity as an adult as long as I have memory.

In the future, Earth has become an artificial world. The world's forests are in large pods in spaceships. They are on their way to replant the earth. Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) is a caretaker on the spaceship Valley Forge. His three other crewmates are callous to his natural ways. People no longer grow food. Then they receive orders to nuke the plants and cancel the trip. Lowell decides to revolt and kill his crew. Other ships wonder why the Valley Forge has not destroyed its forested pods.The story doesn't make sense. It may make poetic sense but this future world is ludicrous. Sometime these kinds of weird non-sense stories fill the old sci-fi publications. The problem is that they are not necessarily meant to be completely logical. One can ignore the illogical premise but as a movie, one can't ignore the lack of any tension. After killing the crew, the movie really goes nowhere. This could be adapted into a poignant Star Trek episode but it's not that compelling as a full-length release.

Silent Running is based on the very real possibility that there will be no more 'right' to life in the United States because its citizens would not be allowed to grow food. Forty years after the film's release, the the current advance of 'right to farm' laws champions corporate domination over all food sources.Little did the creators of Silent Running know that the majority of Americans forty years later would, indeed, reject real food, favoring processed food instead, just as in their film.Silent Running even covers why Americans would find the situation perfectly acceptable: because a thoroughly 'democratized' nation would ideally be able to provide labor opportunities to the entirety of its marginalized proletariat.The film's intelligence is subtle and carried through by an effort of pure-heartedness, hindered only by very poor pacing. If one's patience can last until the development of the lovable Drone's personalities, finishing the film won't be any problem.

"Silent Running" is an appealing, unusual sci-fi tale set in deep space. Bruce Dern plays astronaut Freeman Lowell, who's been working on a project for the past eight years: maintain the last of the flora and fauna scavenged from a devastated Planet Earth, inside huge geodesic domes. One day he gets the orders from his bosses to terminate the project and head home. Unfortunately, this idea doesn't appeal to Freeman, and he mutinies.The film is not subtle about its love-and-respect-for-Mother-Nature, "save the planet" mentality, but it's quite an affecting story no matter what. Lowell does some things one can't exactly condone, but you do understand the man. Thanks to a powerhouse performance by Mr. Dern, you can still sympathize with the man and be moved by his loneliness and social awkwardness. True enough that a story like this would seem like a pretty hard sell to studios, even 43 years ago, since there are no female characters and the main person isn't all that noble.Special effects veteran Douglas Trumbull, renowned for his work on "2001: A Space Odyssey", obviously has a real affinity for creating interesting environments and striking visuals. He uses these visuals just as much as any dialogue in telling the story, which is a pretty entertaining one; it was scripted by Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino, and Steven Bochko. The effects are nicely done, and those robot characters - referred to here as drones - do have some personality, and are highly endearing, if not as memorable as, say, R2-D2 from "Star Wars".The songs, by Joan Baez, and score, composed and conducted by Peter Schickele, are lovely.Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, and Jesse Vint are all fun as Lowells' younger, more carefree associates, but after a while only Dern remains as the sole human presence on screen. His performance has to rank as one of his all time best.Overall, watching this one is a fairly potent experience, and it does stick with you once it's over.Eight out of 10.