The 70’s were a bleak time. Like weeds growing in the cracks in concrete, it was fertile ground for cynical, dystopian sci-fi such as, well, No Blade of Grass. But one of the bleakest is 1973’s Soylent Green, a picture which may, unfortunately, be the most prescient of the bunch.
Before we go any further, you need to accept that, in order to discuss this movie, you either need to have seen it before, or are aware of the big twist near the end of the runtime. Honestly, I’m not sure how much of a surprise it was even in its own time. I think it is interesting Charlton Heston starred in this and The Planet of the Apes, as both are so legendary for their surprise endings that more people know what happens than have seen these movies.
Heston plays a cop in the New York City of 2022, home to 40 million people, even if “home” is largely sleeping wherever they can on staircases such as the one in the building he lives in. He at least has an apartment, which he shares with Edward G. Robinson. The older man works out of the apartment, helping to solve murder cases. Heston works in both homicide and the riot squad, doing an interesting hop over the sleeping bodies when he needs to go downstairs. I have no idea how Robinson accomplishes this feat when he ventures outside at least three times in the course of the film.
The latest high-profile case on which they work is the assassination of Joseph Cotten. He had his head bashed in by a hired thug who is surprisingly apologetic for what he was about to do. Cotten was a very rich man, one of the members of the board of Soylent, the corporation which produces all food now that nothing can grow, thanks to year-round heat resulting from the greenhouse effect. That is the actual term Robinson uses, one I didn’t know was that old. Now all that is available to eat are the mysterious squares of Soylent, which comes in yellow, red and green. The green variant is supposed to be made from plankton harvested from the sea, but we know better, don’t we?
People aren’t sleeping in stairwells in Cotten’s apartment. In fact, a beautiful woman is paid to sleep in his bed, with Leigh Taylor-Young’s occupation described as part of the building’s “furniture”. Now that the last occupant of the apartment is deceased, she only hopes the next tenant will want to keep the furniture; otherwise, out on the street she goes. I never thought I would understand people who dig through the trash and take items home, but now I believe I see the appeal.
She really wants to run away with Heston, though there’s nowhere left to run in a grossly overpopulated world completely dominated by corporations. Another person on the board of Soylent is New York governor Whit Bissell, a connection made by Robinson after perusing secret books Heston obtained from Cotten’s apartment. Those tomes are the Soylent Oceanographic Survey Report, and they will also lead Robinson to assemble the clues leading to the horrible discovery that is the nature of Soylent.
Heston brought some other goodies back from that apartment, having filled a pillowcase with such things as paper, pencils, two apples, a stalk of celery. Robinson is overjoyed at this bounty. But the most valuable item is a steak which, combined by him with other elements, he makes into what appears to be a stew that brings himself to tears, saying he can’t believe they have been reduced to this. Heston remarks he has never eaten like that in his entire life. Something I like about the purloined goods is how much Heston loves the smell of that bar of soap, and there are several moments of him just holding and smelling it.
The strangest aspect of seeing this movie this last time is how different it was from my memory. Then again, my memories of it were incredibly vague, despite having seen it at least twice before. My mental Cliff Notes version was basically murder, food riots, Robinson makes that meal, euthanasia, then the big reveal. Strange, but what I remembered most was the Computer Space cabinet in Cotten’s apartment, a real videogame that was one of the world’s first. It was housed in a gorgeous, molded, solid body fiberglass shell. Today, these are almost exclusively in museums, though I played one at an arcade a few times in the past. Honestly, it isn’t that good of a game.
It wasn’t as good for what it was supposed to be as Soylent Green is as a movie. I remember how the horrible future predicted by it used to be risible, only for many themes in it to be even more relevant today: pollution, climate change, authoritarian governments, crop failures and massive corporations which control our lives. At least we’re not eating each yet (I think, though there does seem to be a lot of mysterious, high-processed, high-protein meat sticks as of late).
Funny, but a lingering question I had after this most recent viewing is, if Soylent green is people, then what was in the yellow and red varieties? Also, if the priest who took confession from Cotten was so devastated to learn the nature of Soylent green, I’d like to present him the possibility of those being used as communion wafers. Those chips may not be the body of Christ, but they were the body of somebody.
Dir: Richard Fleischer
Starring Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Leigh Taylor-Young
Watched on Warner Bros. blu-ray