Critical Film Review Soylent Green

This paper is a movie review on "Soylent Green", released on 9 May 1973 (USA). The movie is produced by Walter Seltzer and Russell Thatcher and directed by Richard Fleischer. The film is set in New York in the year 2022 as anecological dystopian science fiction thriller. It is classified as such because it depicts a dystopian world where the earth cannot support humans because it is exhausted of all resources, especially food, and the corporations that control theentire food supply have manipulated the whole human race unbeknownst into cannibalism. The message of the film is delivered to the audience through a murder-mystery plot.

SUMMARY:

This sci-fi film drives us to the year 2022 when the world is extremely populated and it takes the instance of New YorkCity where the population has crossed 40 million. People face a severe crisis in basic amenities that are essentially needed for survival. People struggled for finding a proper shelter and were seen lying on the floor, staircases, abandoned streets, platforms, etc. Almost half of the population was unemployed and the world was facing severeclimate change conditions due to ozone layer depletion (greenhouse effect). Especially during the summer season, the temperature is over 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Food has become an extinct commodity and hence the world's population relies on supplies provided by Soylent Corporation. The corporation provides Soylent red and Soylent yellow which are considered as "highly nutritious plant-based concentrates". Apart from this, they also introduced Soylent Green whose ingredients were advertised to be made from "highly nutritious planktons" (tiny organisms and plants acrossocean, river, sea, etc.). Soylent green often went short of supplies and this led to massive riots during distribution.

The main character in the movie is Robert Thorn. He is a detective at the New York City Police Department and he shares a room with an old man named Sol Roth who happens to be an ex- professor and mostly is indulged in reading books and old records. Being a good pal of Thorn, he helps him with his investigations and also keeps telling him about how the world was in the early twenties with plenty of food, beautiful scenery, lush green lands, etc. which Thorn never could believe.

Thorn was assigned to investigate the murder of William R. Simonson who was a wealthy lawyer living in a luxurious apartment named "Chelsea Towers West". He went to the apartment, interacted with Charles who was buildingauthority. On entering the apartment, he found Simonson lying on the floor with a pool of blood which showed that his back was stabbed multiple times causing his death. Instead of investigating he went around the luxurious place and tookall valuable belongings (such as food, alcohol, bathing items). Later on, he called the sanitization and forensic team for investigation purposes. He also spoke to Shirl who is a 23-year-old woman living in the apartment and Simonson's bodyguard named Tab Fielding. While taking written statements, Tab claimed that he was asked to take Shirl to shop while the murder took place. Thorn left home and handed over the Soylent Oceanographic Survey Report (2015-2019) which he had found in Simonson's apartment to Roth. In the evening, Thorn visited the office where he found many people lined up in a queue to seek death benefits. He has a conversation with his higher official named Lieutenant Hatcher. Thorn says that he suspects the incident to be an assassination case as there is no evidence found, no robbery of belongings and all the security units (such as alarms, security monitors) were turned off the night the murder took place. He also doubts Tab Fielding's connection to the murder case. The next day, Thorn visits Fielding's apartment and questions Martha (living in "furniture") about connections with Simonson. Thorn takes a spoon filled with strawberryspread without Martha's knowledge and heads to his apartment. Roth had prepared a meal out of the stolen food from Simonson's apartment. Both enjoyed the delicious meal and later on Simonson made Roth taste the spoon filled with strawberry spread. Roth claimed the spread to cost about $150 and it was highly uncommon for a bodyguard's mistress to have such expensive possession. In the evening, he makes a visit to Shirl and finds her partying with a few “furniture girls”. He finds out that Simonson was disturbed for a few days before his death and also took Shirl to a local church. In the meantime, Charles arrives and starts hitting the other girls to chase them away. He is being warned and stopped by Thorn from doing so. Later on, Thorn and Shirl make love. In theevening, Thorn visits the catholic church which accommodates several homeless people, and talks to the priest. The priest initially did not recall Simonson's confession and later on, he recalled and said that he found the confession to be too horrible to believe in. Later on, Fielding visited the church and shot the priest dead so he doesn't reveal anythingfurther. The New York State's Governor instructed Hatcher to close the investigation on how Simonson was killed. Thorn denied closing the investigation and when the Governor got to know about the same, he instructed the chief of security to have him killed. While Thorn was handling the Riot, he was being targeted by Simonson's assassin. Afterseveral failed attempts, Thorn tried catching him with an injured leg but the assassin got crushed to death under the dump vehicle which was used to lift people causing riots. Thorn then went to Shirl's apartment to get the dressing for the wound and Shirls expresses her love and says she wants to live with Thorn. Roth, on the other hand, takes Soylent'soceanographic reports to the Supreme exchange to analyze the details with members and they find out the bitter truthwhich left them in immense shock. Upon learning the disgusting truth Roth decided to assisted suicide at a government hospital and the process is known as "going home". He was watching video clips of how beautiful the earth was years ago (with all animals, scenery, lush green spaces, etc.). Meanwhile, Thorn returns to the apartment and finds a note from Roth which states he is "going home". Immediately he rushed to the hospital and threatened the staff to let him meetRoth. Roth told him the truth that the soylent green is not made from plankton, it is made from human bodies. He requested him to follow his body to the waste disposal plant to learn the truth and then inform the Supreme Exchange so necessary actions can be taken up from the National Council. Thorn sneaks into the vehicle that carried the corpses to the waste disposal plant. He saw how larger machines converted corpses into Soylent Green and commuted them through belts. He got spotted by two workers, he killed one and escaped from the other. He escaped from the plant right when the alarm buzzed and managed to reach the city. While he was making his way to the Supreme Exchange, he wasfollowed by Fielding and three other men carrying guns. Luckily, Thorn accessed the Police phone booth. He first called Shirl and confessed his love and later on made a call to Lt. Hatcher and informed him of his location and the situationhe is trapped in. While he was running, he managed to shoot the three men but Fielding shot a bullet at him. He ran into the homeless shelter and tried to hide from Feilding. Later on, with the great struggle, he manages to kill Fielding, and in the meantime, the police arrive. Thorn says out loud to Hatcher that "Soylent Green is PEOPLE! And we have got to stop them somehow!".

COMMENTARY:

The film begins with an intro which lays the foundation of the film. It is a series of pictures and clips from the past, starting from the mid-19th century (late Industrial Revolution period) to the modern period. This imagery shows theaudience how the world has–for the lack of a better word– ‘progressed’, in the due course of industrial development, from an ecologically self-sustaining planet to a planet entirely at the mercy of private corporations. All water bodies arenow poisoned, there is no ‘ecology’ of any sort anymore, the planet has been emptied of its resources. The intro sets up the context of the film successfully.

Though the film, made in 1973, is set about 50 years ahead in future, it still doesn’t feel futuristic. The fashion in thefilm still looks like the 1970s, people talk in the same way, the TV commercials (of Soylent Green) still advertise products in transatlantic English, people still use payphones, we don’t see many advanced tech-gadgets in the film. The film simply shows the world as it was in the 1970s except only 49 years older and far more rundown, (Ebert, 1973). The film, a product of its time, probably aimed to warn the people then about how the world might end up looking ifthey didn’t start working immediately to prevent the end of the world as they knew it. This is probably why the film is so candid in how it depicts the world in the future. People should be able to relate to a dystopian reality that isn’t yet. And what better way to achieve that than showing the public what they already see, except a much more disturbingversion.

The film is centered around food. A lack of food. And how the society itself is built around it. Food is not collected or grown or harvested by humans anymore, as there are no ecological resources available on the planet. “Scientific magicians [have] poisoned all the waters”. Soylent Green is just “tasteless odorless crud”. Food is not fun anymore. Soylent Corp is the sole food provider and has complete control over the world’s food supply. ‘Soylent’ is now a synonym for food. Food is capital and so is human life. There is a socio-cultural change that is observed in the film. The human body is looked at as merely a productive asset, therefore capital/exchangeable with capital, even after death. There is no consideration for human dignity. In the past, there used to be funerals. Now, any human that dies is just recycled in the waste disposal plants and turned into Soylent Green.

The film also shows the class difference among people. A rich minority possesses most of the wealth while rest of the population is practically on the streets. There is overpopulation, lack of resources, and disproportionate distribution of wealth. The people are being lied to about what Soylent Green is really made out of, and at the same time, Soylent Green, or people themself are the only source of food that the human race can now rely on anymore for survival. Andthose who do come to learn the truth, all end up either being killed or, unsurprisingly, committing suicide. An interesting point here is that the reason for such a dystopian reality apart, Soylent Corp, while wrong to lie to people, is also right at the same time. If people are told the truth, nobody would want to continue trying to survive just to keep living in an incorrigible reality anymore. On the other hand, it would also affect the business of the rich few who are running Soylent Corp, and therefore affect their privilege. The rich still have reason to live. How will they live, if the very people whose exploitation their privileged life is so dependent on die out or stop cooperating?