Soylent Green

Soylent Green
theatrical release poster by John Solie
Directed by	Richard Fleischer
Screenplay by	Stanley R. Greenberg
Produced by	Walter Seltzer Russell Thacher
Starring	Charlton Heston Leigh Taylor-Young Edward G. Robinson
Cinematography	Richard H. Kline
Edited by	Samuel E. Beetley
Music by	Fred Myrow
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date	April 19, 1973 (1973-04-19)
Running time	97 minutes
Country	Template:Film US
Language	English

Soylent Green is a 1973 American science fiction film directed by Richard Fleischer. Starring Charlton Heston, the film overlays the police procedural and science fiction genres as it depicts the investigation into the brutal murder of a wealthy businessman in a dystopian future suffering from pollution, overpopulation, depleted resources, poverty, dying oceans and a hot climate due to the greenhouse effect. Much of the population survives on processed food rations, including "soylent green".

The film, which is loosely based upon the 1966 science fiction novel Make Room! Make Room!, by Harry Harrison, won the Nebula Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film in 1973.

Plot

In 2022, the population has grown to forty million people in New York City alone. Housing is dilapidated and overcrowded; homeless fill the streets and line fire escapes and stairways. Food has become a rare and expensive commodity. Most of the population survives on rations produced by the Soylent Corporation, including Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow, which are advertised as "high-energy vegetable concentrates". The newest product is Soylent Green, a small green wafer that is advertised as being produced from "high-energy plankton". It is more nutritious and palatable than the other varieties, but is in short supply, which often leads to food riots.

Robert Thorn is a New York City Police Department detective in the 14th Precinct who lives in a cramped one-room apartment with his aged friend, Solomon "Sol" Roth. Roth is a "book", a former professor who searches through the remnants of written records to help Thorn's investigations. He tells Thorn about the time before the ecological disaster and population crisis, when food was plentiful. Thorn is generally not interested in such stories, finding them too hard to believe.

Thorn investigates the murder of William R. Simonson. At the crime scene, he finds Simonson lying in a pool of blood after having been struck multiple times in the back of the head. Instead of looking for clues, the poorly paid detective helps himself to the wealthy man's food, liquor, shower and books. He questions Shirl, an attractive 21 year old concubine (euphemistically known as "furniture") who comes with the apartment, and Simonson's bodyguard, Tab Fielding, who claims that he was told to escort Shirl on a shopping trip when the attack took place.

Returning to his apartment, Thorn gives Roth the Soylent Oceanographic Survey Report, 2015 to 2019, a two-volume work that he took from Simonson's apartment. Thorn returns to work and talks to his superior officer, Lieutenant Hatcher, telling him that he suspects it may have been an assassination, since nothing was stolen from the apartment and the murder seemed professional. He finds it odd that the luxury apartment's sophisticated alarm and monitoring electronics happened to be inoperative on the night of the murder, and his bodyguard just happened to be out of the apartment.

After questioning the bodyguard's "furniture", Thorn returns to his apartment to eat a meal of the purloined food, where Roth tells him that Simonson was a member of the board of directors of the Soylent Corporation. When he presents Roth with a spoon of strawberry jam surreptitiously palmed from Fielding's apartment, Roth tastes it and declares that Fielding's "furniture" is eating some "$150 a jar" strawberry jam, an out-of-place luxury for the mistress of a bodyguard. Thorn returns to question Shirl again; she tells him that Simonson became troubled in the days before his death, even taking her to church. Thorn attempts to question the priest about Simonson's confession, but the priest is almost catatonic with exhaustion and has a hard time remembering Simonson, though such a rich man would have stood out among the impoverished people who frequent the church. When the priest remembers Simonson, he tells Thorn that the memory of what Simonson told him was haunting, and is unable to describe what Simonson said. Fielding later murders the priest, suspecting him of telling Thorn about Simonson's confession, and ensuring there is no possibility of him telling anyone else. After Thorn begins uncovering evidence as to why Simonson was murdered, New York State's Governor, Joseph Santini, who was once Simonson's partner in a high-profile law firm, instructs Hatcher to close the investigation. However, Thorn continues his investigation into the murder. When Thorn is on riot duty during the distribution of rations, Simonson's murderer is dispatched by the Soylent Corporation to kill him during a riot, and fires several shots at Thorn, but the attacker is crushed to death under the "scoop" of a riot control vehicle.

Roth examines Soylent's oceanographic reports at the "Supreme Exchange", a library and gathering place for fellow "books". Roth and his fellows realize that the reports indicate a "horrible" truth that they find nearly impossible to believe. The oceans have died and no longer produce the plankton from which Soylent Green is said to be made. The leader of the Exchange tells Roth that they need proof of what the Soylent Corporation is doing before they bring their findings to the Council of Nations (ostensibly, a reformed United Nations). Unable to live with what he has uncovered, Roth opts for assisted suicide at a government clinic in Madison Square Garden, which had been converted for mass euthanasia, a process referred to as "going home". As Roth is dying, he listens to light classical music and watches video clips of Earth long ago when animals and plant life were thriving and there was no pollution. Thorn forces the staff to allow him to see and talk to Roth. During Roth's final moments, he tells Thorn the secret of Soylent Green, and begs him to follow his body to the processing center and report back to the Exchange.

Thorn sneaks into the basement of the facility, where he sees corpses being loaded onto waste disposal trucks. He secretly hitches a ride on one, which drives to a heavily guarded waste disposal plant. Inside the plant, Thorn sees the corpses processed into Soylent Green wafers. Thorn escapes and heads for the Exchange, but is ambushed by Fielding and several other gunmen. He retreats into a cathedral filled with homeless people. After a fight through throngs of sleeping homeless, Thorn kills Fielding.

When police backup arrives, the seriously wounded and nearly hysterical Thorn confides to Hatcher the horrible secret behind Soylent Green, finally urging him to spread the word: "Soylent Green is PEOPLE!"

Cast

• Charlton Heston as Thorn
• Leigh Taylor-Young as Shirl
• Chuck Connors as Fielding
• Joseph Cotten as Simonson
• Brock Peters as Hatcher
• Paula Kelly as Martha
• Edward G. Robinson as Sol Roth
• Stephen Young as Gilbert
• Mike Henry as Kulozik
• Lincoln Kilpatrick as The Priest
• Roy Jenson as Donovan
• Leonard Stone as Charles
• Whit Bissell as Santini
• Celia Lovsky as The Exchange Leader
• Dick Van Patten as Usher #1

Production

The screenplay was based on the 1966 Harrison novel Make Room! Make Room!, which is set in the year 1999 with the theme of overpopulation and overuse of resources leading to increasing poverty, food shortages, and social disorder as the next millennium approaches. Harrison was contractually prevented from having any control over the screenplay and kept from knowing during negotiations that it was MGM buying the film rights; He discussed the adaptation in Omni's Screen Flights/Screen Fantasies (1984, ISBN 0385192029; edited by Danny Peary), noting that the "murder and chase sequences [and] the 'furniture' girls are not what the film is about — and are completely irrelevant" and answered his own rhetorical question "Am I pleased with the film? I would say fifty percent."

While the book refers to "soylent steaks", it makes no reference to "Soylent Green", the processed food rations depicted in the film. The book's title was not used for the movie since it might have confused audiences into thinking it was a big-screen version of Make Room for Daddy.

This was the 101st and last movie in which Edward G. Robinson appeared. He died from cancer twelve days after the shooting was done, on January 26, 1973. Heston was the only member of the crew that Robinson told (just before filming the scene of Robinson's character's death), knowing that this knowledge would deeply affect Heston, and therefore his playing of the scene. Robinson had previously worked with Heston in The Ten Commandments (1956) and the make-up tests for Planet of the Apes.

Music

In the film, after the aged Roth learns the truth about Soylent Green, he decides he "has lived too long", and states that he is "going home". By this, he means that he is going to sign up for government-assisted suicide. When Roth arrives at the clinic, he is asked to select a lighting scheme and a type of music for the death chamber. Roth selects orange-hued lights and "light classical" music. When he goes to the death chamber, a selection of classical music (Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Grieg) plays through speakers, and films are projected on large screens. As Thorn arrives and gazes upon his dying friend, Dick Van Patten utters his famous line "It's truly unfortunate that you missed the overture."

The "going home" score in this part of the film was conducted by Gerald Fried and consists of the main themes from Symphony No. 6 ("Pathétique") by Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6 ("Pastoral") by Beethoven, and the Peer Gynt Suite ("Morning Mood" and "Åse's Death") by Edvard Grieg. As the music plays, scenes of majestic natural beauty are projected on film screens: "deer in woods, trees and leaves, sunsets beside the sea, birds flying overhead, rolling streams, mountains, fish and coral, sheep and horses, and lots and lots of flowers — from daffodils to dogwoods." Amidst the music and the scenes of nature, Roth remembers the world as it once was. Yet, he cannot peacefully take his last breath as he is pained by the beauty lost and cannot stand the awfulness of the real world. Roth struggles to tell Thorn about the secret of "Soylent Green", (muttering "The Corporation... they're processing people") urging him to "prove it" before taking his dying breath.

Critical response

Time called it "intermittently interesting"; they note that "Heston forsak[es] his granite stoicism for once" and assert the film "will be most remembered for the last appearance of Edward G. Robinson...In a rueful irony, his death scene, in which he is hygienically dispatched with the help of piped-in light classical music and movies of rich fields flashed before him on a towering screen, is the best in the film." New York Times critic A.H. Weiler wrote "Soylent Green projects essentially simple, muscular melodrama a good deal more effectively than it does the potential of man's seemingly witless destruction of the earth's resources"; Weiler concludes "Richard Fleischer's direction stresses action, not nuances of meaning or characterization. Mr. Robinson is pitiably natural as the realistic, sensitive oldster facing the futility of living in dying surroundings. But Mr. Heston is simply a rough cop chasing standard bad guys. Their 21st-century New York occasionally is frightening but it is rarely convincingly real."

As of June 2011, Soylent Green has a 73% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 30 reviews.

American Film Institute Lists

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills - Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
  • "Soylent Green is people!" - #77
• AFI's 10 Top 10 - Nominated Science Fiction Film

Home video

Soylent Green was released on laserdisc by MGM/UA in 1992 (ISBN 0792813995, OCLC 31684584). In November 2007, Warner Home Video released the film on DVD concurrent with the DVD releases of Logan's Run and Outland, "two other '70s sci-fi classics."

Trivia

Soylent Green is referred to in a number of television series and other media, either for dramatic or comedic effect.

In the American crime drama television series Millennium (1996–1999), the main character Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) uses the phrase "Soylent Green is people" as a login to the Millennium Group Database.

A 1993 episode of Saturday Night Live purported that Soylent Green had been made into a franchise, consisting of increasingly unsuccessful cinematic sequels. All clips shown played off the dramatic final scene of the original film. A clip from the fifth sequel, Soylent Green II, shows Thorn (played by Charlton Heston (Phil Hartman)) crying, "Soylent Green is STILL made out of people! They didn't change the recipe like they said they were going to! It's STILL people!!"

In the summer of 2011, a green wafer containing plankton under the Soylent Green brand was released. Created and produced by The Parallax Corporation, and manufactured under official license, its packaging is an imaginary conceptualization of how Soylent Green might have been sold.

External links

• Soylent Green at IMDb
• Soylent Green at AllMovie
• Soylent Green at Rotten Tomatoes