Retrospective: Soylent Green (1973)

[Jerry Saravia]

SOYLENT GREEN (1973)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
RATING: Three stars

When I first saw "Soylent Green" over twenty years ago, I always
remembered the green haze in the city of the future and the Soylent
Green food as something other than edible. Twenty years later with SNL
and Simpsons mocking the cult film, I see a decent, memorable film
here that is unintentionally amusing and, strangely, somehow hypnotic.

Set in the year 2022, it is New York City as a futuristic,
overpopulated dystopia - a nightmarish vision that is mostly seen in
daylight. The sun beams hard on this city, though a green smog fills
it (sort of like China). People have a hard time finding apartments so
they all sleep in apartment staircases or fill up the local church by
sleeping on bunk beds and on the pews. Every Tuesday is Soylent Green
day where a green wafer-thin food substance is served free to the
people on the streets. Why this peculiar food item? Because the masses
want it and it is all that is available to them. Jugs of water are
filled on the street for the people. Essentially, the mass population
of poor people are treated like dirt, left to mostly squander and
survive on their own.

A stocky Charlton Heston plays Detective Thorn who lives like the
poor, though he shares an apartment with his wise friend and police
researcher, Sol (played by the late Edward G. Robinson). Thorn
investigates the murder of William Simonson (Joseph Cotten), the head
of Soylent Enterprises. Initially the murder is thought to be
committed by a burglar but Thorn knows better - he thinks the man was
assassinated. Thorn also knows how to screw up a crime scene since he
washes his face with soap and steals some liquor, meat and vegetables
- of course, the benefits of real food and real tap water for anyone
in this dystopia who isn't rich is like winning the lottery
(strawberry jars, for example, are $150 each). There is also Shirl
(Leigh Taylor-Young), a prostitute referred to as "furniture" (ouch!)
who lived with Simonson - every time she speaks, it is in whispering
tones. But this murder leads to some sort of conspiracy involving
Soylent Green corporation and how they produce their synthetic foods.
The final twist may not come as a shocker but it will leave a knot in
your stomach.

Director Richard Fleischer does well with staging riot scenes and
crowd scenes in general. The sense of overpopulation in New York is
also well-presented - you get a real sense of clutter, ubiquitous
litter and the empty streets at night surrounded by towering
skyscrapers. And though the green smog is clearly shot with a green
filter, it almost makes you feel queasy.

Not so well-handled is the casting of Charlton Heston. I always saw
Heston as a man who insisted on macho authority as if he willed it
from his steel chin, those Moses eyes and his large, invincible chest.
He not only seemed like Moses in most every role he ever played - he
was Moses. Someone as iconically authoritative as Heston makes the sci-
fi trappings of "Soylent Green" seem miniscule and unimportant.
Perhaps that is the point but Heston always seems too larger-than-
life. That is why he fit so well in "The Omega Man" - he spent most of
the movie isolated from existence and encountering albino, flesh-
eating mutants! That was more apropos for the titanic, muscular giant
that Heston was.

Heston is still watchable but the mood and the purposeful snail-pace
of "Soylent Green" accentuates the hypnotic quality of it. Edward G.
Robinson makes us listen to his every word, especially in his last,
touching scene that is sure to make you well up a little. Hardly a
perfect film, "Soylent Green" is consistently despairing in its bleak
future - suggesting that our ecological resources will cease to exist.
Definitely food for thought.


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