Soylent Green (1973)

 Fifty three years ago the events depicted in Soylent Green may have seemed far fetched yet today maybe not so much. Based loosely on Harry Harrison’s novel Make Room, Make Room (though the adaptation changes some events and has a different outcome) the 1973 film depicts population and climate change having rendered life almost impossible for many. People sleep on staircases and queue for hours for synthesised food produced by the Soylent company while everyone suffers under blistering heat twenty four hours per day. Corruption is rife and memories of life before this urban hell are fading.

 

New York in 2022 totters under the weight of a population of eighty million who survive mostly on a diet of high protein food created, they are told, by cultivated plankton and provided by the Soylent Corporation who advertise it as something wonderful even though I’m not sure why they would need to promote something so many people need.. The narrative is driven by a police procedural that enables main character NYPD detective Robert Thorn to get to the heart of what is going on when a rich member of the Soylent board is murdered.  

Thorn himself is somewhat cynical, one of those solitary cops who makes his own rules and is unfamiliar with the world of the air conditioned privileged. When Soylent executive William Simonson is brutally killed, Thorn suspects this was not a robbery as it appears to be but some sort of professional as assassination. It soon becomes clear that his boss and ultimately the Governor don’t want this investigation to continue which just makes Thorn more convinced something big is being hidden.

We get to see a somewhat different world- the rich and powerful live in more pleasant conditions. They have smart apartments each of which comes with `furniture`, not just of the literal kind but in the form of a girl there to do whatever they wish.  This aspect does seem more in keeping with the misogyny of 1973 rather than something from the future as this was a time when a lot of men didn’t do household chores or cook. Clearly only men lived in these places, there seems no corresponding arrangement for any women. Thorn’s investigations raise awkward questions and he finds himself a target.

This could be one of the first films to acknowledge what we now call climate change or as it was then known the greenhouse effect. Its convincingly depicted here by using a yellow filter on the cameras and making sure everyone looks sweaty all of the time. The scenes lso show many extras wearing face masks, now a far more familiar sight than they were back then. Incidentally it’s also believed to be the first film to show a computer game. One of the most arresting images shows crowds of people unhappy at the food supplies running out whereupon their protest is soon halted as dozens of them are literally lifted by bulldozer into lorries.

Thorn shares a cramped flat with Sol Roth, an elderly former college professor with access to books that hardly anybody reads anymore. It is Roth’s discovery of the truth behind the Soylent Green that causes him to decide to volunteer for euthanasia. Played by Edward G Robinson in his final film role, the character acts as a memory of better past times also shown in an opening montage.  Roth represents the optimism of the past; the character makes several references to how things used to look or taste. When Thorn proffers real meat and fruit from Simmons’s flat and takes it back  there is a wonderful scene of the two eating these rarities in a way we take for granted. Apparently improvised by the two actors it is like an oasis amidst depictions of grim poverty and sterile abundance.

Though the film avoids Hollywood poignancy choosing to concentrate on realism Roth’s final scene at a euthanasia clinic (pointedly named Home) watching footage of a natural world long gone is a powerful summary of the things we could all lose, hitting home probably more so now than it would have in 1973. Roth manages to convey what he knows to Thorn before he dies. It was the last scene Robinson ever filmed which makes it even more emotional as the actor knew he was terminally ill and indeed died four months later.

“Soylent Green is people!” If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll guess the twist though I didn’t know in advance. Mind you I had assumed Soylent Green was the name of a place till it clicked quite soon in the film. It is a slight issue that having learned the truth from Roth that Thorn tries to get into the Soylent factory to see the process. At this point the viewer has not been explicitly told (we don’t hear what Roth says) but as Thorn knows the truth his sojourn into the factory seems more to add an action sequence near the end.

The story finished there with it being unclear whether or not Thorn’s discovery will change anything. It almost feels like there needs to be a sequel. It’s a dark reveal though handled in the same matter of fact manner which director Richard Fleischer applies to the entire movie. He’s a director with a cv that includes such varied fare as 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Doctor Dolittle, 10 Rillington Place, The Jazz Singer and Amityville 3D. What he brings to Soylent Green is a hard edge that succeeds in conveying a world without much hope but with a lot of fear and tension.  While there is some incidental music most of the film is without it, highlighting the crisp sound mix and murky picture which successfully creates the required mood. The movie’s depiction of a broken down society allows it to side step the  unconvincing gaudy sets that featured in other sci fi movies of the time. Also, there’s a surprisingly high number of extras all crowded together and filmed close up which really adds substance. In the streets and in a church sanctuary they are perfectly choreographed to be the overlooked citizens of the future New York. Even the police station is crowded and this contrasts with the clean, spacious apartments elsewhere.  The need to show a decaying city was helped by using sets that were themselves deteriorating; this was the final film to be shot here before the backlot was demolished less than a year later.

Notwithstanding his dubious personal politics revealed later in life, as an actor Charlton Heston always brough a heft to his movies. He had an earthy believability which works here in the same effective manner as it did with Planet of the Apes or The Omega Man. If you wanted to convince audiences of something strange, Heston was the man to sell it. His heroic tendencies are tempered by an intelligence and while the results can be melodramatic surely the subject matter fits that.

 Edward G Robinson is excellent without being too gimmicky as the old professor and the scenes with the two of them are amongst the film’s best ones. As Shirl, the `furniture` occupying Simonsen’s now vacant apartment, Leigh Taylor- Young gives a dignity to a character who could be a cipher. Some strong supporting performance bolster the film including Lincoln Kilpatric as an exhausted priest and another big screen legend Joseph Cotton’s’ short but telling scenes at the start as Simonson.

The film is a conspiracy theorists goldmine. Yet as we advance unbound into relentlessly improved technology requiring fewer jobs and less interaction its not difficult to imagine a depressing endgame. Perhaps even though the details may blur over time (obviously the film does not predict the online world), the thrust of Soylent Green , its depiction of corrupt exploitative corporations and intolerable poverty for many, isn’t anywhere near as fictional now as it seemed in 1973.