Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

Rachel Carson (1907-1964) is widely regarded as the founder of the environmental movement. With the global warming crisis making daily headlines, it's only fitting that this 1993 presentation from the popular PBS series American Experience should be released on DVD. A straightforward biographical portrait, following the standard format of interweaving talking head interviews and archival footage, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring tells us that Carson was an avid reader and nature-lover who started writing at the age of 10, majored in biology at the Pennsylvania College for Women (an unconventional focus of study for women during the Depression era), and eventually became a peerless writer of natural histories that combined her passion for nature with her highly developed literary skills. Carson openly championed efforts to curb the use of harmful pesticides such as DDT, a struggle that resulted in her most famous and influential book, Silent Spring (1962), titled after Carson's assertion that pesticides could silence the songbirds that she loved to listen to on her rural property in Maryland. Carson's controversial exposé led to widespread criticism and political vilification, but her determination spawned a new era of environmental awareness and progressive governmental policies (Carson herself succumbed to cancer two years after Silent Spring was published). Featuring interviews with surviving friends and colleagues (speculation about her allegedly intimate relationship with close friend Dorothy Freeman is discreetly avoided here), coupled with dramatic readings of Carson's work by Meryl Streep, this film offers a vivid, memorable study of a modest yet forcefully outspoken woman who laid the groundwork for changing the way we perceive our world. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (J. Shannon)