Movie Review: Soylent Green a Dystopian Classic

The 1973 movie Soylent Green is often mocked for its campy look, for its overzealous actors (Charlton Heston), and its script. However, it is still a must-see for the American movie buff.

Soylent Green is set in Manhattan, New York, in 2022. The city is overcrowded. People are literally lying in the stairs, waiting for someone to die so they can have an apartment. At the beginning of the movie, we see a rather straggly young man make his way down the stairs past all the bodies. We then see this man having a private meeting with another man inside a car! This is how crowded it is. You have to meet inside a car (with open windows even) to have some privacy. The man is given a meat hook.

Next, we see one very rich man's apartment. He is obviously loaded because he has a humongous condo all to himself. No one is lying on the stairs. Rich man's mistress, named Shirl, is playing what appears to be an ancient video game. Shirl is furniture; she comes with the apartment.

Next thing we know, meat-hook man is going inside the rich man's apartment. He tells him that they say that they're sorry but this has to be done. The rich man agrees and turns his back. Meat hook man then proceeds to debilitate him.

This is all exposition and setting. Soylent Green drops you in the middle of this story without any kind of explanation. It uses the old learn by experiencing method to draw in the audience. The fact that a piece of meat is treated like it's a priceless treasure tells you how low the world's standards have sunk. This society has never tasted a grapefruit, is not able to take showers, and is amazed at the size of a bar of soap.

In addition, everyone eats soylent green as a lifeblood. Soylent green resembles one-ounce baking chocolate squares, only it has the color of a wilted piece of lettuce. Yet everyone is fighting over it in the marketplaces.

Our hero is Charlton Heston. He plays a police investigator named Robert Thorn assigned to the rich man's murder. It looks like a simple robbery, but Thorn suspects there is more to the story than meets the eye. He and Shirl start a cozy little relationship.

But Thorn is a man with a mission. He spends a lot of time tracking down clues for this case, and the closer he gets, the closer it seems someone is trying to stop him from solving the case. Of course, in this day and age, the secret of soylent green isn't much of a secret anymore. But, I think this movie is worth a viewing by the younger generations.

The story is laid out with little or no telling. And Heston is passionate in his task, as usual. There is also the added benefit of there being a librarian in this movie. Heston lives with a man named Sol who is his personal library. In fact, he is called a "book" in this world. He is a living book as most books have disappeared somehow. I guess you don't need books when you have the joy of soylent green in your life.

Despite the fact that this movie was made in 1973, it is still entertaining. I am sure it was even more shocking for its contemporaries. It asks the same questions that dystopian films do today (Think Children of Men or Blade Runner): What if people stopped valuing knowledge? What if the government is hiding something from us? What if women were viewed simply as furniture? What if we ran out of things we take for granted? And finally, what if we had nothing to eat but little squares of green glop? Ew!