On Sunday, June 12, 2011 at 8:01:06 PM UTC-7,
wlah...@gmail.com wrote:
Hey,
Is Joan Baez the kiss of death to this flick or what? The premise of
this flick makes little sense and that's not always a deal breaker in
a sci-fi film. In this case, the real problem is making Freeman (get
it?) Lowell (Bruce Dern) likable and sane. To make him the whackjob he actually should be would undermine the eco-message that is rather
heavily handled. When you have Joan Baez sing about innocent children
as a soundtrack to a suicidal nuclear explosion, something is deeply
and profoundly bent in how this film presents itself. The basic gist
seems to be: We are HAL. Not surprising that the director -- Douglas
Trumbull -- worked with Stanley Kubrick on "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Good -- if misdirected -- work by Dern in a film that never defines
itself from the confusion that seems to drive it. It may be a seminal
work in that it inspired many others but I found it to be a unhinged
metaphor banging against hollow wood.
William
(2022 article):
https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/silent-running-50-year-anniversary
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