SusannahSILENT RUNNING VS. MOON
January 10th 2010 07:15
Silent Running (1972) vs. Moon (2009)
Silent Running: Starring: Bruce Dern
Directed by: Douglas Trumbull
Moon: Starring: Sam Rockwell
Directed by: Duncan Jones
These are both man-alone-in-space films that deal with strong themes; for Silent Running it is one man’s quest (Bruce Dern as Freeman Lowell) to preserve the last vestige of nature in a world that no longer values or cares about the natural world. In Moon it is Sam Bell’s (Sam Rockwell) struggle to come to terms with the fact he is not unique, nor even the first of his kind on the moon. Together the films make an ideal sci-fi double-billing as they share a 70s aesthetic; the one actually made in the seventies, and the other paying homage to the former. Both chart one man’s journey of self-discovery in the isolation of space.
In Silent Running Freeman Lowell (only referred to as Lowell until he, literally, becomes a “Freeman”), is a crew member on board the spaceship Valley Forge with three other crew. His job over the last eight years has been to tend to the gardens growing in the four globes attached to the spaceship. As we learn, the gardens the spaceships are carrying are the last of their kind as all nature has become extinct on Earth. Earth has become a perfect environment where the temperature is always 75 degrees. Lowell loves the gardens and hopes that one day they will be reinstated on Earth. His fellow crew mercilessly mock his love of the gardens, and tell him that no one cares about them anymore. One day the order comes through for them to be blown up and the spaceships to be returned to commercial service. The time has come for Lowell to act.
In Moon Sam Bell has been manning a space-station on the moon by himself for 3 years, where he is mining helium-3 to send to Earth as fuel. He longs to return home to his wife and child with whom he has been keeping in video contact. One day he has a bad accident when he is out from the moon-base travelling in a moon-rover. Next thing he knows he is waking up in the medical room without a scratch on him. But he is no longer the only person living on the moon-base.
What really makes both of these films is the acting by the leads Bruce Dern and Sam Rockwell. Bruce Dern conveys a zealous passion for his garden and you really feel that it is the end of his world when the order is given for the forests to be destroyed. It makes the murders of his fellow crew-members almost understandable as Lowell goes to any lengths in order to stop the destruction of the last garden in the universe. The resulting guilt and loneliness however, as he drifts in space alone with his garden, become too much of a burden for him to bear.
Sam Rockwell’s Sam Bell has almost the opposite problem: his dilemma is that he is not alone, or rather [SPOLIER] that there is more than one of him. He is one in a series of clones whose health appears to break down every three years, necessitating the thawing out of a replacement from storage. But this time Sam’s replacement has found the original Sam, injured and still alive. Sam Rockwell does an excellent job of conveying the two different Sams, who, despite being clones, have distinct personalities: the new Sam is cocky, fit, impatient, and a bit of an asshole. The old Sam is fragile from spending so much time in isolation. He is lonely, and grappling with issues of identity, and the fact that the wife and child he misses so much are people he has never even met. Plus his body is disintegrating rapidly.
Both Freeman and Sam are assisted by robots. For Freeman it is three short little droids who wobble cutely from side-to-side. He names the surviving two, Huey and Duey. They gradually become more and more human as Freeman reprogrammes them. The robots even appear to care for each other. For Sam he has GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), who at first appears to be a sinister, HAL-like one-eyed robot, with his assurances that he is here to “help” Sam; but whom actually does help him to discover the truth about his true identity, or rather, lack of one. The robots in both films provide the compassion for the protagonists that the other humans are unable to provide. The ultimate irony being in Silent Running that the droid Duey will be the final caretaker of the last of Earth’s plants, caring for the remaining garden in a way that humans neglected to do. The final image of the dome drifting off into space with the small droid inside, is a haunting one.
Both Silent Running and Moon are a thinking person’s sc-fi film. Neither is heavy on action, but are instead imbued with ideas. Both are well acted, well crafted, and carefully paced films to make you think about the human condition, and what it means to be human. Some may find the seventies eco-message of Silent Running a little heavy-handed, but it is perhaps more pertinent than ever in our current ecological climate. Moon also raises serious questions about the ethics of progress in our age of genetic manipulation.
Silent Running: Starring: Bruce Dern
Directed by: Douglas Trumbull
Moon: Starring: Sam Rockwell
Directed by: Duncan Jones
These are both man-alone-in-space films that deal with strong themes; for Silent Running it is one man’s quest (Bruce Dern as Freeman Lowell) to preserve the last vestige of nature in a world that no longer values or cares about the natural world. In Moon it is Sam Bell’s (Sam Rockwell) struggle to come to terms with the fact he is not unique, nor even the first of his kind on the moon. Together the films make an ideal sci-fi double-billing as they share a 70s aesthetic; the one actually made in the seventies, and the other paying homage to the former. Both chart one man’s journey of self-discovery in the isolation of space.
In Silent Running Freeman Lowell (only referred to as Lowell until he, literally, becomes a “Freeman”), is a crew member on board the spaceship Valley Forge with three other crew. His job over the last eight years has been to tend to the gardens growing in the four globes attached to the spaceship. As we learn, the gardens the spaceships are carrying are the last of their kind as all nature has become extinct on Earth. Earth has become a perfect environment where the temperature is always 75 degrees. Lowell loves the gardens and hopes that one day they will be reinstated on Earth. His fellow crew mercilessly mock his love of the gardens, and tell him that no one cares about them anymore. One day the order comes through for them to be blown up and the spaceships to be returned to commercial service. The time has come for Lowell to act.
In Moon Sam Bell has been manning a space-station on the moon by himself for 3 years, where he is mining helium-3 to send to Earth as fuel. He longs to return home to his wife and child with whom he has been keeping in video contact. One day he has a bad accident when he is out from the moon-base travelling in a moon-rover. Next thing he knows he is waking up in the medical room without a scratch on him. But he is no longer the only person living on the moon-base.
What really makes both of these films is the acting by the leads Bruce Dern and Sam Rockwell. Bruce Dern conveys a zealous passion for his garden and you really feel that it is the end of his world when the order is given for the forests to be destroyed. It makes the murders of his fellow crew-members almost understandable as Lowell goes to any lengths in order to stop the destruction of the last garden in the universe. The resulting guilt and loneliness however, as he drifts in space alone with his garden, become too much of a burden for him to bear.
Sam Rockwell’s Sam Bell has almost the opposite problem: his dilemma is that he is not alone, or rather [SPOLIER] that there is more than one of him. He is one in a series of clones whose health appears to break down every three years, necessitating the thawing out of a replacement from storage. But this time Sam’s replacement has found the original Sam, injured and still alive. Sam Rockwell does an excellent job of conveying the two different Sams, who, despite being clones, have distinct personalities: the new Sam is cocky, fit, impatient, and a bit of an asshole. The old Sam is fragile from spending so much time in isolation. He is lonely, and grappling with issues of identity, and the fact that the wife and child he misses so much are people he has never even met. Plus his body is disintegrating rapidly.
Both Freeman and Sam are assisted by robots. For Freeman it is three short little droids who wobble cutely from side-to-side. He names the surviving two, Huey and Duey. They gradually become more and more human as Freeman reprogrammes them. The robots even appear to care for each other. For Sam he has GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), who at first appears to be a sinister, HAL-like one-eyed robot, with his assurances that he is here to “help” Sam; but whom actually does help him to discover the truth about his true identity, or rather, lack of one. The robots in both films provide the compassion for the protagonists that the other humans are unable to provide. The ultimate irony being in Silent Running that the droid Duey will be the final caretaker of the last of Earth’s plants, caring for the remaining garden in a way that humans neglected to do. The final image of the dome drifting off into space with the small droid inside, is a haunting one.
Both Silent Running and Moon are a thinking person’s sc-fi film. Neither is heavy on action, but are instead imbued with ideas. Both are well acted, well crafted, and carefully paced films to make you think about the human condition, and what it means to be human. Some may find the seventies eco-message of Silent Running a little heavy-handed, but it is perhaps more pertinent than ever in our current ecological climate. Moon also raises serious questions about the ethics of progress in our age of genetic manipulation.
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