Soylent Green (1973)

⁣Soylent Green (1973) Please Donate
⁣The second of Charlton Heston’s late 60s-early 70s shocker-reveal films (following 1968’s Planet of the Apes) Soylent Green mines several classic Sci-Fi tropes. In a future made unlivable by pollution, overpopulation and resource depletion, agriculture has almost disappeared. A small privileged elite runs things, while the grubby, starving masses subsist on lime-colored biscuits called Soylent Green--made from ocean plankton—which is the sole remaining source of food.
Charlton Heston plays Charlton Heston (OK, “Thorn”), a teeth-gritting homicide cop investigating the death of an elite executive. Frankly, the plot feels a bit peripheral. It provides little sense of interest or movement, instead largely serving to showcase this world and to set up the final reveal. Thorn weaves between the decadent elite, with their fancy apartments, pretty party girls, and real food, and the masses, who just sort of shuffle about as they wait for their handouts of Soylent Green.
Apocalypse is a common fiction theme, so too is a world bifurcated by social class. Soylent’s cinematography sells this crudely but reasonably effectively. The masses exist in a very dark world—literally; the sun never seems to shine, and it is sometimes hard to even see what is going on--while the elite spaces are lit with the bright, simple colors of the 1970s.