Silent Running (1972)

Silent Running features another unhinged performance from Bruce Dern. He plays Freeman Lowell, a scientists aboard a spaceship looking after the only remaining examples of Earth's plant life as it heads off to Saturn. Lowell has become attached to the eco-system in the spaceship and less with his crew mates who he kills when they receive orders to destroy the plant life. On his own, alienated, staving off madness, all Lowell has are three droids for company and then his plants start to die as they get less sunlight as the craft nears Saturn. Douglas Trumbull in some ways has directed a low fi science fiction film, in some ways the interior sets reminded me of a television series from the early 1970s. It also contains some folk songs to accompany its environmental message.