Review for Silent Running (Masters of Cinema) (Review)

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Introduction
The Javan Rhinoceros is now extinct in Vietnam. That was the headline to a brief story printed in the Guardian newspaper a week or so ago. The story itself merely stated that a poacher had killed the last known specimen for its horn (what else?), and that elsewhere, only 30 individuals were accounted for in the wild, making this one of the most endangered species of mammal in the world. It's always the tiny little stories tucked away on page seven of the broadsheets these days, where no one bothers to read them, the continuing destruction of the rainforests, climate change, pollution, the melting of the ice caps, and more and more species hurtling to extinction, like the various sub species of tiger, Chinese river dolphins, gorillas… It should be front-page headline news, a crime akin to genocide, that humanity has yet again irrevocably destroyed another part of the natural world. But it's become part of the norm, the way of things, it's rapidly becoming invisible. Back in 1971, Silent Running was simply that 'hippy sci-fi' movie. But with each passing year, it becomes more and more a prescient warning that too many of us, and more importantly too many of the people in positions of power choose to ignore. Now that Masters of Cinema are sprucing it up and giving us its high definition debut, maybe we rabid consumers who lavish our affections on the latest gadgets, the big screen TVs and home cinema systems, will pay attention…

In an unspecified future, the natural world has finally been eradicated, destroyed by a humanity that no longer needs growing stuff to survive, whether it is for food or for oxygen. But a guilt afflicted society has decided to preserve as much of the natural world as is possible, which in this case means launching samples of flora and fauna into space, nurtured amidst large geodesic domes carried aboard massive freighters. For Freeman Lowell aboard the Valley Forge, it's his sworn duty, his one true calling, and the one place he feels truly at home. For his three crewmates, it's a dead end job in the hind end of space. Lowell has been campaigning for the reestablishment of the Parks and Forests system on Earth, but when the call comes in, it's an order for the freighters to return to their normal duties, for the mission to be abandoned, for the domes to be jettisoned and destroyed. His crewmates may be jubilant, but that's the one thing that Freeman Lowell will not allow.

Picture
The 1.85:1 widescreen 1080p transfer on this disc looks pristine. It's absent of any print damage or cine wobble, and you can read in the accompanying booklet the journey it's had from interpositive, via restoration to this disc. That said, you shouldn't expect modern blockbuster levels of clarity and pop on this disc. This is after all a 40-year-old low budget, practically independent film. The film looks a little flat at times, there is a significant but constant level of film grain, and blacks in certain scenes, especially effects sequences, do tend to be uneven, no doubt because of the front-projection techniques used to get all the effects in camera. But in the brighter scenes, colours are strong and vivid, and detail levels are high. You can read all of the badges on Lowell's uniform, and see the detail in the cloth texture. The effects work still holds up well today, mostly because as mentioned, it's in camera, while shooting the interior sequences on the decommissioned Valley Forge aircraft carrier gives the film an epic scope.

The images in this review are sourced from the press release, and aren't necessarily representative of the final retail release.

Sound
The audio for Silent Running is the original mono format, presented here as a DTS-HD MA 2.0 English audio track. As you can imagine, it's a front focussed affair, with little in terms of space to it, but the clarity is excellent, there's no distortion or drop outs, and the film sounds fantastic given its constraints. Then there is that hauntingly memorable Joan Baez theme song…

English SDH subtitles are provided should you require them.

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