Dystopian Futures: Soylent Green Review

So, from one sci-fi classic to another today, it's Soilent Green from 1973, starring Charlton H and based on the 1966 novel Make Room, Make Room by Harry Harrison. It deals with the themes of overpopulation, pollution, and environmental disaster, and it's set in the year 2022. So, I suppose I should have reviewed this film last year. The film opens with a nice photographic montage of life in America pre and postindustrial revolution leading all the way up to relatively modern times and then beginning in 2022. The message is that the world is overpopulated, air quality is poor, and the planet is dying because there's too many humans. Charlton H's character is Robert Thorne, a New York Police Department detective, and he's living in New York City with its 40 million population. Incidentally, in real life, New York's population is only about 18.9 million. The film tells the story of Thorne's investigation into the death of a rich lawyer named William R. Simson, who was murdered, and in the process, Thorne uncovers a wider conspiracy. He was a member of the board of the Soilent Corporation. The further he investigates, the more the bodies start stacking up as the terrifying truth is being covered up by powerful people. And Thorne soon finds his own life is in danger due to his unwillingness to drop the case. Thorne lives with his elderly friend Saul Roth, who helps him with the investigation. What's interesting is the conditions that most people live in. Utter poverty. The electricity frequently switches off and the lights dim. So a person has to make use of a bicycle generator to produce power for their home and keep the lights on. And they have to collect water from communal water fonts with everyone else. Mask wearing is even commonplace. Although people aren't wearing them because they fear catching something, but because of the air pollution. Only the elite can afford to live in large luxurious homes. The vast majority of people are living in small dwellings in highdensity urban areas. Furthermore, while the rich consume fresh, clean water and a diverse and wide-ranging diet of healthy foods, most people are eating what Roth describes as tasteless, odorless crud. A highly processed, mass- prodduced, synthetic food in the form of some kind of wafer or cracker. The options are Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow, and the latest one is Soylent Green. The television propaganda describes Soylent Red and Soilent Yellow as high energy vegetable concentrate, and Soilent Green is a miracle food, allegedly made from high energy plankton gathered from the oceans of the world. Sounds like the Eat the Bugs diet or something packed full of protein. Roth explains how life used to be. In his day, a person could buy meat anywhere, eggs, real butter, and fresh lettuce in the stores. But now, the planet is suffering from a constant greenhouse effect. The film certainly contained some elements of today's political environmental messaging. None of the hysterical environmental alarmism of the film ever came true. Of course, if you're not stupendously wealthy in this dystopian future, then life is spent in an ever growing ghetto. Leaving your apartment each day requires you to navigate the sleeping bodies of people on staircases and hallways and of course the vast overcrowding of the city streets. State enforced curfews are a regular occurrence along with civil unrest and riots, which is why this appears to be a heavily controlled police state. Suffice to say, the things we take for granted every day are certainly in short supply in the world presented in Soilent Green. I certainly find certain aspects of this story quite relevant to some of the things we're being prepared for today in the real world because in this 1973 interpretation of 2022, real meat is a rare luxury. Something that certain organizations in the real world are telling us will happen in the future. Apparently, even now, plant-based fake meat and labgrown synthetic beef are being touted to replace healthy real meats. So, this film was certainly ahead of its time. The sight of fresh vegetables, bourbon, and fresh beef reduces Roth to tears. The society depicted in this film has certainly had its expectations of living standards and quality of living drastically reduced. He asks Thorne, "How did it come to this?" Indeed, life has become so dreadful that assisted suicide has become the norm in this world of Soilent Green. There are government facilities where a person can go in order to terminate their lives. Early on in the film, when Roth says to Thorne that he should have gone home long ago, that's what he's referring to. Most of the population appears to be dependent on the government for their basic needs, an ideal way for tyranny to function. They need food coupons and financial assistance to get by. Sounds like UBI or something. Indeed, the most basic foods and everyday things we take for granted today appear to be astronomically expensive and out of the reach of most people. After combing around Simonson's apartment and going through some of his personal effects, Thorne finds two books, the soilent oceanographic survey reports for 2015 to 2019. Thorne is being tailed by someone during his investigation. Clearly, someone doesn't want him snooping or finding anything else about the death of Simonson. Long story short, and I'm moving ahead in the plot and skipping over some details here, but Thorne's boss wants him to drop the case as he's getting pressure from above. Roth learns the truth about why the soilent corporation wanted to get rid of Simonson, and in the end, the old man decides to end his life. The euthanasia process is like a quasi religious ceremony and comes complete with pleasant visions of nature and nice music, making the whole thing even more grotesque. It's important to say that in the future depicted in this film, it appears most of planet Earth is no longer lush, beautiful, and green. Vegetation and trees are rare, if not non-existent. Idealic countryside, forests, and clean oceans are a thing of the past. The planet is in rough shape, though we don't get a clear picture of what most of the rest of the planet actually looks like. It's most likely barren and desolate with no more growth. The soil is poisoned after all, and plant and animal life have been decimated. As Roth explains, the atmosphere is drowning in this horrible thick green smog. There's also these tree sanctuaries where children can play in a pitiful recreation of nature. The visuals presented to Roth in his final moments are of what the earth used to be when he was young. Roth's final instructions to Thorne is for him to find proof about the truth behind the soilent grain. So Thorne goes to the factory where the soilent food is made only to discover that human bodies are being fed into the machines. The film concludes with a final action scene in which Thorne attempts to escape with the truth, but he is mortally wounded. The reality is the ocean is dying. There isn't enough plankton to actually produce the soilent food, so human bodies are being used instead. Soilent green is people, as Thorne exclaims. The film ends in a rather unsatisfying and abrupt way. It's not clear if Thorne survives. And although his boss promises to contact the exchange and present the evidence that Soilent Green is indeed people, it's not clear if he was just humoring Thorne or not. So, we never find out if justice was ever done, if the conspiracy was ever exposed, and if the technocratic system that people live under was ever dismantled. After watching this film, I'm sort of left with the frustrating question, what was the point of it all? I have to say I don't like this movie at all because I get the feeling there's a not so subtle agenda and political message behind the film that I find detestable to say the least. because it depicts a bleak future dystopia based on completely bogus environmental alarmism propaganda. A nightmarish vision of Earth that we're told has become desolate, poisoned, and ecologically destroyed as a result of there being too many humans on the planet. The disgusting message being humans are bad for the environment. This is a 1973 film attempting to present a vision of 2022 that ultimately never happened and was never going to happen. And by the way, I'm not going to let this film off the hook just because it's a classic old movie that has become iconic over the years. Of course, in reality, the environmental movement still to this day is basically telling us that everything humans do and consume is bad for the planet. We should reduce our living standards, increase our taxes, own nothing, stop eating meat, live in a pod, eat the bugs, ridiculous stuff. What I really don't like about this movie is that if you think about it, it's basically saying that although the shocking truth behind Soilent Green may be truly awful, there's a subtle suggestion that there's no choice left but to embrace cannibalism. I mean, think about it. After all, in this film, the planet is dying, and there's not enough plankton left to produce the soilent green to feed everyone. So therefore, what else could be used to feed people except dead human bodies? Is this another message of the film? It's not like there was plenty of plankton left to make the soilent green, but the Soylent Corporation just got too greedy and they started cutting corners and it was cheaper and easier for them to use dead bodies instead. That would be something because then the story would be about Thorne exposing this corporate greed and corruption. But in actual fact, the soilent corporation had no choice. Admittedly, they didn't tell the population that they were feeding them people, probably because they knew that people wouldn't accept it. But the Soilent Corporation were clearly determined to continue to feed people one way or the other, and the only recourse left to them was to resort to using human bodies in their production of Soilent Green. There wasn't anything else to use. So, in a sense, the Soilent Corporation almost come across as being benevolent. Is this another message of the film that in the end if things get really bad environmentally, we might have to end up resorting to cannibalism? Is the film meant as a warning? If it is, it's based entirely on a fictitious scaremongering narrative.