Movie - Silent Running (1972)

There is a lot of that fantastic 1970s hippie propaganda in this movie - the gloom and doom about how mankind is destroying the world and the Joan Baez songs about how we can be one with nature. That aside, because it really can be as amusing as it is obnoxious, I thought it was a pretty enjoyable film.

You learn later that, in their attempt to create a comfortable utopia, humanity has, once again, created a distopia when mediocrity is the result. The main character, however, has a dream - he sees a great value in preserving and restoring the Earth's flora to the Earth. He tries to get the others on his ship to understand, but they just mock him and his vision. When the guys in charge on Earth send orders to blow up the flora pods attached to the spaceship, he does what he has to in order to preserve them.

I think that what made this movie enjoyable for me, other than the robots and Bruce Dern's robe, were three very important themes:
1. Even if all of humanity says that something is right or wrong, valuable or worthless, that doesn't mean that they are correct.
2. Both technology and nature have value for us. We shouldn't live in caves, but, a. there are great lessons to learn from interacting with nature, b. a lot of health and enjoyment comes from being outside, and c. without a healthy ecosystem, we cannot be healthy.
3. There is a scene where Bruce Dern's character is arguing with his shipmates about the food that they are eating. He asks them how they can eat it, it's not real, it's synthetic, it doesn't come out of the ground like what he eats. They mock him, of course, and say that they like their synthetic food. As a foodie, I appreciate this scene because the food that too many people eat is garbage, tasteless, and boring. I make a conscious effort to find and eat, what I believe is, real food, packed with flavor instead of preservatives, and from all over the world, the more authentic, the better. So many people mistake familiarity with quality. They enjoy it because it's familiar to them - the same options and the same ingredients. I suppose that there is a little bit of Heidegger's philosophy of authenticity in this perspective of mine... The best part is that at the end of the movie, he catches himself eating the synthetic food. Authenticity is an ongoing battle, one that the weary, ill, and complacent lose.

Summary from IMDb:
In a future where all flora is extinct on Earth, an astronaut is given orders to destroy the last of Earth's plant life being kept in a greenhouse on board a spacecraft.

IMDb