Disturbing film foresaw many aspects of today’s environmental crisis
By Alberto Sclaverano
1973 dystopian science-fiction film Soylent Green was not particularly successful when it was first released, but it later achieved an almost cult status. Rewatching it today can be a very unique experience, due to the impressive prescient aspect of the movie, that foresaw many of the incoming global problems.
The film was directed by prolific director Richard Fleischer (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954, Mandingo, 1975, Conan the Destroyer, 1984, among many others) and was based on the 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison. The story is set in 2022 in an overpopulated and hyper-polluted New York City. While investigating the murder of a wealthy man, Detective Robert Thorn (played by Charlton Heston) discovers a terrifying truth about the food that the poorest (and largest) part of the city’s population consumes daily.
In this apocalyptic future, due to heavy pollution and accelerated climate change, the Earth’s ecosystem has collapsed, resulting in heavy scarcity of resources such as clean water and food. At the same time, the global population has continued to grow, and the inequality between the rich and the poor has reached a point of no return.
In New York City the wealthier live in perfectly clean houses and still have access to high-quality food and drinks. They are often protected by armed guards and advanced security systems. The rest of the population is confined in formicary-like neighborhoods in which all consumer goods are scarce. The main source of food is provided by multinational corporation Soylent Corporation, which has recently launched a new product, Soylent Green, a highly nutritive, cracker-like food which covers the human’s body basic needs, and it is formally derived from plankton. But, as detective Thron soon discovers, the level of water pollution has become too heavy even for Oceanic plankton to survive, and there is a plot by Soylent Corporation to cover the horrific reality of Soylent Green’s real origin.
While the final discovery is shocking, in the end, is the whole movie’s atmosphere and description of the future that makes it so disturbing. Fleisher’s film takes to the most radical consequences of problems such as environmental pollution, Earth resources’ massive exploitation, and the increase in economic inequality. It anticipates films like Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium (2013) by depicting an extremely divided society, in which the wealthy consume the few remaining resources and the others are forced to live in hell-like conditions.
We live almost exactly in the year in which Soylent Green takes place. While we have fortunately not yet reached the level of society’s degradation portrayed in the movie, it is impressive to see how many dangers foreshadowed in the movie and the book fiftyone yeqrs ago are now among humanity’s main concerns, especially the climate crisis and the rapid exhaustion of the planet’s resources. We can still avoid a nightmare-like scenario like the one imagined in Harrison’s story, but we need to act quickly. What was a dystopian thriller in 1973 is now closer to reality than everyone could have guessed at the time of Soylent Green’s release.
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