Soylent Green Movie Response

Soylent Green (1973) offers a troubling image of a future world in which housing, food, energy, and even the most basic forms of nature have become almost unobtainble for all but a select few. Director Richard Fleischer explores this dystopic world by juxtaposing two spaces: the modern world of the wealthy and the world below where the city's destitute masses struggle to eke out a basic existence.

In Soylent Green, the audience is led to believe that it is the poor that lives in a poor, overpopulated, dystopian world while the rich are left to live in the lap of luxury without a care in the world. On the surface this appears to be true, until detective Thorn stumbles upon the truth and with that, discovers that the poor and the rich really are both living in the same nightmarish dystopian society.

Some of the very earliest images we have in the movie are of Thorn and his partner Sol Roth in their tiny apartment, with only room for one room made of bookshelves and a kitchen/bathroom/bedroom. The oddities are noticeable right off the bat, with Sol telling Thorn how long it had been since he had any actual food to eat and how he didn't like the taste of the Soylent products. But the desperation of New York City doesn't become truly evident until Thorn steps outside his door and has to tip toe his way through a labryinth of sleeping bodies that are piled up every on the staircase leading from Thorn's apartment to the street.

Once outside, the scene does not become much prettier. Where once great skyscrapers and historic landmarks sat, now the whole of New York City appears to be desititue and ruined by time and people. The scene is reminscnent of a third world country, complete with a dusty market that only sells Soylent.

When Thorn is called to the scene of a murder of rich man named William R. Simonson, which the audience had seen earlier to be an assasniantion, Thorn wastes no time getting his hands on nearly anything he can get his hands on in the apartment. Simonson was the richest of the rich, having been on the board for Soylent company, so he was able to afford the finest and most valuable items money could buy; actual food, soap, hot water, video games, and liquor among other things.

While it seems ridiculous from the outside looking in to think that Simonson had anything but a wonderful life compared to the people living on the staircase, as Thorn begins to untangle the mystery behind Simonson's death, he discovers Simonson might have been living with the biggest burden of all. As he was on the board for the Soylent company, Simonson knew of the special ingredient that was included in the Soylent Green product - people. The overpopulation and a decline in plankton in the ocean led the Soylent company to start grinding up dead bodies and feeding them back to the masses.

In the moments leading up to his death, Simonson speaks with his murderer without any emotion in his