+++ Opinion +++
There are a lot of good and bad things to say about Charlton Heston. But you have to give the acting legend one thing! She had an enormous talent for making already catchy lines completely immortal: Heston promptly closed two sci-fi milestones with a marrow-shattering exclamation, which represent basic knowledge for film fans. Heston’s prostration and wail in “Planet of the Apes” has long since seeped deep, deep into mainstream pop culture. And then there’s the equally iconic “Year 2022…who want to survive” among savvy sci-fi fans.
The thriller, now better known by its original title “Soylent Green”, is not only A compelling, fast-paced crime story in a dark future. The sci-fi milestone also has as biting eco-thriller a kind of pioneering position about the consequences of unbridled capitalism on people and the environment. And he has an oft-quoted, unforgettable ending. Including distinctively smashing Heston.
arte is showing “Soylent Green” today, October 10, 2022, from 8:15 p.m and immediately afterwards the companion documentary “The eco-thriller Soylent Green – red alert from Hollywood”. It contrasts the bitter vision of the future in 1973 with the harsh reality of today.
The year is 2022 and the state of the earth is worrying. Drinkable water is becoming more and more precious, food is becoming scarce and usable living space is also becoming a rare commodity. Only the privileged can afford good, ecologically produced food, most of them subsist on cheap, mass-produced food from the Soylent corporation.
The announcement of a new Soylent product that is said to be more nutritious and tastier than its predecessors is greeted with great joy and impatience by the public. But New York police officer Thorn (Heston) and his roommate Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson) have other things on their mind: Simonson, one of Soylent’s executives, died under strange circumstances that they are now investigating. But the closer they get to a hot lead, the more deaths stand in their way…
Although Richard Fleischer has by no means staged Hollywood’s first dystopia with “Soylent Green”, the director of “The Fantastic Journey” succeeded in making a film that can very well be described as groundbreaking: instead of sketching a future of impressive-looking technical progress, “Soylent Green” is largely based on decay and the escalation of already known, unpleasant developments. And that without immediately jumping into a post-apocalyptic world.
As if the most unclean industrial district imaginable had taken over the entire world, “Soylent Green” takes place between smoking chimneys, concrete blocks and asphalt deserts in which the impoverished people cavort. Fleischer and cameraman Richard H. Kline (“King Kong”) do not show this barren world with admonishing reverence, but throw their audience into this desolate mess of confinement with a bone-dry matter-of-factness.
The imagery alone sets up a chain of arguments that a lack of care in dealing with the environment leads to an increase in social inequality. Harry Harrison’s novel “New York 1999”, on which “Soylent Green” is loosely based, already addressed the topic. But screenwriter Stanley R. Greenberg ties these aspects even more closely over the course of the sweaty detective story. That’s how it happens grandiose twist, which the trailer practically anticipated back then, and which at least sci-fi fans can hardly escape nowadays.
Be it through references, homages or films that implement the newly conceived twist for the novel adaptation in a similar form. Nevertheless, he will simply not be revealed at this point in order to give the uninitiated the chance to discover for themselves how pointedly but symbolically consistent “Soylent Green” ends. Especially since the real Mega-Twist might not even be Thorn’s insights. But in the fact that nobody is interested in his warning cries…
