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Even if you have never seen director Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green from 1973, you know its ending. Quoted in everything from television’s Barney Miller to the mockumentary Drop Dead Gorgeous, the film’s climax exists now as the most spoiled secret in movie history ever – easily outdoing Darth Vader as Luke Skywalker’s daddy. Yet, its cultural relevance as a study of the future is what remains and, as any film historian can attest to, what that tells us – through the lens of the 1970’s – is that their imaginations aren’t that far off from where we are now.
The year is 2022. Man is at war with his own humanity and environment. As a result, the earth is dying a slow and terrible death. Oceans are drying up. The sun is burning everything. Animals have died. People are being fed food rations. Cities have taken over and not much of the world’s countryside is left unaffected by pollution, energy shortages, earthquakes, and overpopulation.
Congratulations, modern progress won.
Detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) is instructed to investigate the murder of William R. Simonson (Joseph Cotten) and bring his assailant to justice. Living in a one-room oversized closet with his best friend, Solomon Roth (Edward G. Robinson, who easily steals the show from Heston), Thorn accepts the assignment and – while he does do a bit of detective work – isn’t above stealing from the apartment where the murder has occurred for he and Sol’s own benefit. Yet, the “joke” of the murder becomes something more when each piece of the puzzle leads both men closer to the truth the company is keeping from its people.
The film is a weird one to review – especially in this day and age. It doesn’t altogether work, but, then again, did it ever? It’s grossly uneven in tone and has some wild moments of bizarre situations between women and men. Yet, the film still speaks to our future as a society. Isn’t there some significance in that?
The women are referred to as “furniture” and the government provides assisted suicides for its people, yet the truth of the new processed food Soylent Green remains just out of reach. That is, until Sol learns of the earth’s truth. The oceans aren’t dying. They’re dead already. The processed food rations being delivered to the people can’t be made unless the makers of Soylent products can find a substitute for the plankton…
An ending you can see a mile away, yet the gristled look of this masterpiece of 70s sci-fi continues to dazzle the mind. Hell, it’s more relevant today than it was when it was made. There’s no denying that fact. Fleischer’s work behind the camera keeps the narrative tight and operating as a bleak detective story wrapped in a dystopian world in which all is lost. Yet, it still delivers a strong cautionary tale that will continue to go unheard by future generations.
You don’t have to be a fan of Heston’s chops or politics to dig this one - the final in his holy trinity of science fiction films (a set that includes Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man). Yes, he’s muggish and on the cusp of becoming irrelevant and bloated, but none of that really matters because – with the atmospheric gloom lurking about in every corner – he fits right in. Thorn is a once-upon-a-time hero in a loser’s battle.
Make no mistake; the truth about Soylent Green is right around the corner...
I mean what else could make Nabisco’s products so filling?
MPAA Rating: PG.
