![]() ![]() In a brilliantly wordless scene, Thorn and Roth share a meal reminiscent of some long-forgotten time when they’d tasted “real” food, instead of the stale junk they’re now so used to hoarding. All breathtaking, not by “doing” anything spectacular, but merely by “being.”įood, water, housing, and energy shortages are so acute that the very sight of a strip of edible beef, warm water gushing from a tap, or a fragrant bar of soap is enough to drive a person to tears. In a scene meant to illuminate the little things that we take for granted, Heston’s eyes light up, startled at seeing nature at its unselfconscious best: animals, plants, flowers, birds, trees, hills, rivers, fish, oceans, clouds, the sky, the sun. Robinson in a studio portrait for the film “Soylent Green.” The 1973 science fiction film, directed by Richard Fleischer, starred Robinson, as Sol Roth, in his last film performance. Neither subplot is gripping enough on its own but, worked into the main story, they add to the overriding drama of mankind’s wanton self-destruction. Another is about the woman from Simonson’s mansion, Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young), who falls for Thorn. One of the movie’s subplots is about detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) and his aging aide Sol Roth (Edward G Robinson), who are trying to track down Simonson’s killers. Simonson (Joseph Cotten), pays for his lies with his life. No different from governments that lie to their citizens. Soylent green movie#The movie explains how greedy corporations that promise paradise to desperate consumers are, in short, liars. Its spin-off products flood the market: Soylent soybeans, Soylent buns, Soylent crumbs.Īs irate crowds protest against a drying up of Soylent supplies, a ruthless state enlists earthmovers, not just riot police, to disperse and silence them. Soylent Corporation, it turns out, controls half the world’s food supply and at least some bureaucratic elements within a powerful state. Charlton Heston as detective Thorn who investigates what’s going on with a mysterious food crop called Soylent Green. And what exactly is this miracle substance? It’s the “new, delicious Soylent Green, the miracle food of higher-energy plankton from the ocean.” Or so we’re told. Civic broadcasts announce a curfew one minute and a vegetable concentrate that’s available the very next. ![]() Those opening sights and sounds continue in apocalyptic fervor. It’s 2022, the place is New York City, and the population is 40 million. The film isn’t set in 1973, when the it hit the big screen, but decades into the future. As they flicker onto the screen, the images turn more disturbing and, in hindsight, prescient: unprecedented overcrowding, pollution of the land, water, and air, mountains of waste, and epidemics that necessitate the wearing of face-masks. It’s a scene of people driven to a crisis of decay and shortage, not by some alien external hand, but by their own excess. Soylent green series#Next, loud, aggressive music accompanies a rapid series of images, but this time we see multitudes, trapped in a frenzy of industrialization, overpopulation, and urbanization. It illustrates mankind’s all-too-hurried transition from a languid, 19th-century agrarian economy to a whirling 20th-century industrial economy.įirst, soft, mild music accompanies a slow succession of images of hillocks, boats, and horse-drawn vehicles we see only a handful of people: children and adults sitting, standing, and indulging in leisurely activities (fishing, farming, and the like). Beetley, and score composer Fred Myrow open their movie with an arresting, comic-book-like montage. Greenberg’s screenplay.įittingly, Fleischer as director, his cinematographer Richard H. ![]() His most famous novel, “Make Room! Make Room!” (1966), was so visually compelling that filmmaker Richard Fleischer adapted it into the dystopian thriller, “Soylent Green” (1973), based on Stanley R. PG | 1h 37min | Science Fiction, Thriller | 1973īefore he became a sci-fi writer, Harry Harrison was an illustrator for sci-fi comics. ![]()
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