Soylent Green -- 1973 -- PG

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who know the secret of Soylent Green and those who don't. I'm in the majority. I knew it before I saw the film. I blame kaleidoscope which revealed the secret in class (holy cow) like, twenty years ago. But knowing it did not diminish the enjoyment of the film. It allowed me to appreciate the subtext just a little more.

The film follows a detective investigating the murder of a very rich man who was on the board of the Soylent Corporation, a company that manufacters a food substance consisting of soybean and lentils called soylent, which comes in a variety of different colors: red, yellow, blue, and of course, the green. Tuesday is Soylent Green day. The world this occurred in is grossly overpopulated to the extent that people sleep where ever they can find a few feet to curl up in. The animals are gone, the plants are dying, and only this Soylent stuff keeps people alive.

During the course of the investigation, it seems someone doesn't want our detective friend to find out the truth behind the murder of the rich man. He is tailed, shot at, and shut out. People who have learned the secret either are killed (or in one case, kills himself). The edetective is removed from the case which is summarily closed. He won't let it die until he learns the truth...and learn it he does.

Of course, this is a 70's movie, so the ending is a bit down and somewhat ambiguous. They do this on purpose because the prodution code prior to 1968 rarely allowed such ambiguity or down endings, so they want to be revolutionary. Unfortunately, it became a staple of the era.

The detective is fairly well rounded along with his immediate relationships. We understand him and his world. It's a definite dog eat dog world where he comes from so he takes every advantage he can get when he sees it. This being a sci-fi-ish world, the world itself is well created, too. It's horribly believable as a possible outcome to the world we live in. They paid attention to little details along the way to make it more horrifying and that much better. Imagine women willingly referred to as "furniture" and they come with the fully furnished apartment you're leasing.

There re only a couple of things that stood out to me as weird. One was when curfew sounded. Well, following this curfew sounding, people were still out and about, and even our hero (who didn't seem to have a curfew pass) was running around like it was nothing. In fact, nothing came of this supposed curfew at all. The other oddness was when our hero hitched a ride on one of the sanitary disposal trucks. Um, no one behind this truck saw anything? I guess no one pays attention when they drive in this time period either. I will say the driver switch they did was very clever and fit the story perfectly.

So it's a good film that paints a bleak and disturbing picture of the future. All that world needed was a good war to thin out their numbers and they'd've been fine. Once you learn the secret, watch it again to catch the subtext. You'll then catch all the other references made to this film all across the culture since then. The secret here is akin to the big twists in other "big twist" films such as Psycho, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Sixth Sense; it's something that the filmmakers desperately want you not to know before you watch, but popular culture reveals because the twist is what makes the film unique.

It's a good film, and a solid part of film history. If you haven't ever seen it, it's worth it at least once. And no, I won't tell you the secret.