Soylent Green
Sep. 22nd, 2010 09:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleThe latest classic film I've found time to watch was Soylent Green. Not knowing much about it beyond its famous punch line, I had assumed it was a campy B-movie. So I was a little surprised to discover that it was actually a serious and fairly thoughtful film.
Interesting that in '72, the film could identify global warming as the cause of the end of the world with only minimal exposition; I was not aware that this idea was so broadly recognized at the time. Everything about the world of this film is entirely plausible, except for the date. Considering the ages of the characters and what they said about their youth, having it set in 2022 makes no sense at all. A hundred years later would have been a more logical choice.
An interesting philosophical point for me was the idea that, in a world without nature, images of the long-gone natural world would evoke a strong response in someone who had never seen it themselves. The suicide scene was one of the strongest statements about the "spiritual" role of nature I've ever seen in film. Ty could have just shrugged his shoulders and said "Hm, that's pretty weird", and in so doing, demonstrated his complete adaptation to the post-apocalyptic world. What the film is telling us is that, no, it doesn't work that way; that the destruction of nature leaves a gap in the human spirit that can never be filled.
[I cannot help but contrast this to George Carlin's vicious, unbelievably stupid take on the value of endangered species. I used to think he was kind of witty, but this clip convinced me that no, he's just another loud-mouthed douchebag.]
I won't give away any spoilers about the ending (LOL) but it's not exactly a cheerful message. Bill saw it when it was first released, and said that at the time it was considered shocking. It's hard for me to imagine a time when depictions of the apocalypse weren't already overdone.
Interesting that in '72, the film could identify global warming as the cause of the end of the world with only minimal exposition; I was not aware that this idea was so broadly recognized at the time. Everything about the world of this film is entirely plausible, except for the date. Considering the ages of the characters and what they said about their youth, having it set in 2022 makes no sense at all. A hundred years later would have been a more logical choice.
An interesting philosophical point for me was the idea that, in a world without nature, images of the long-gone natural world would evoke a strong response in someone who had never seen it themselves. The suicide scene was one of the strongest statements about the "spiritual" role of nature I've ever seen in film. Ty could have just shrugged his shoulders and said "Hm, that's pretty weird", and in so doing, demonstrated his complete adaptation to the post-apocalyptic world. What the film is telling us is that, no, it doesn't work that way; that the destruction of nature leaves a gap in the human spirit that can never be filled.
[I cannot help but contrast this to George Carlin's vicious, unbelievably stupid take on the value of endangered species. I used to think he was kind of witty, but this clip convinced me that no, he's just another loud-mouthed douchebag.]
I won't give away any spoilers about the ending (LOL) but it's not exactly a cheerful message. Bill saw it when it was first released, and said that at the time it was considered shocking. It's hard for me to imagine a time when depictions of the apocalypse weren't already overdone.
