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I've just had my first adult viewing of Soylent Green, DVR'd from Turner Classic Movies.
I'll have to admit: apart from the jaunty main title and the classical pieces, I didn't notice much of the score. Maybe it was dialed down somewhat in the film.
I was even going to say how utterly different the music was from The Omega Man, a "neighboring" film with which it has several things in common, but upon checking the CD sound clips online, it seems that Soylent has cues from the same genre as Omega. Somewhat similar but very different. They both go for a kind of macho "movie jazz," but The Omega Man is more melodic and energetic, punching far above its weight for size of orchestra, etc.
As for the overall film, I wonder if the idea behind Soylent Green was elaborate enough to sustain a feature as opposed to, say a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode. Or maybe they just needed to stage a bigger conflict over the film's main plot idea.
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Soylent Red is mentioned in the film. I wonder what that was made from.
Also people. And here is where I would put - if I could find it - a link to the Saturday Night Live sketch showing all of the various films in the "Soylent" franchise, with John Goodman as the director, and Phil Hartman as Charlton Heston. I only saw it once, but it really stuck with me - it was such a ludicrous concept for a sketch, and yet I thought it worked wonderfully. I still think of Soylent White, Soylent Cowpies, and "Soylent Green II" (the upcoming film that they give away the ending of) regularly.
In any event, I love this score. Myrow's (and Fleischer's) work is lively, original, and rather intense at times. I do like Myrow's original music for Sol, but can understand why they may have elected to go for actual classical music instead. That opening title music is brilliant. I'll have to put this on (and its companion in CD, the equally dazzling "Demon Seed") soon.
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As for the overall film, I wonder if the idea behind Soylent Green was elaborate enough to sustain a feature.
Well, the idea was elaborate enough to sustain the novel the film is based on, Harry Harrison's popular 1966 "Make Room, Make Room"
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Posted: |
Sep 18, 2013 - 12:49 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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As for the overall film, I wonder if the idea behind Soylent Green was elaborate enough to sustain a feature.
Well, the idea was elaborate enough to sustain the novel the film is based on, Harry Harrison's popular 1966 "Make Room, Make Room"
The film differed in some major ways from the novel. In the book, first published in 1966, the setting is 1999, rather than 2022, but, as depicted in the film, there is rampant over-population, pollution and food is scarce. Rather than a murder investigation of a noted industrialist, as in the film, the novel’s lead character, “Andrew Rusch” (“Thorn” in the film), is pursuing a killer with black market and political connections. The romance between Rusch and “Shirl,” as in the film, is central to the plot. The assisted death of “Sol Roth” in a clinic is absent from the novel. The major difference between the novel and the film is that in the former, while the food supply is a constant dilemma, there is no insidious company turning corpses into food, as depicted in the film.
Like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, SOYLENT GREEN is another of those sci-fi films that wasn't set far enough into the future to outlast the lives of many of the people who originally saw it in the theater.
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Hey Bob, did you clean that image up for us? It looks just like one I found on the Web, only better.
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Not to sidetrack the thread, but I’m curious as to your thoughts. This film depicts some of the women as “Furniture”. Was this a cautionary message about the future of women’s status in society? Did the filmmakers ignore the growing empowerment of women movement of the day or was it just a swipe at the rich “elites”? Not that it had a huge impact on the film, but even in ’73 I thought that was a gaffe on the part of the script and it did detract somewhat.
What the affluent apartment renter got was a young, good looking, live-in girlfriend who "worked" for room and board. She would obviously get paid something by the landlord, meaning your rent would be higher. But even so, for this to be economically practical, they were dramatizing a future in which non-rich people were desperate for a nice place to live. And young, pretty people find a way.
So as far as I can tell, it wasn't primarily about subordinating the female. It was about over-crowding and desperation among the common people.
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Posted: |
Sep 18, 2013 - 2:21 PM
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By: |
jackfu
(Member)
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What the affluent apartment renter got was a young, good looking, live-in girlfriend who "worked" for room and board. She would obviously get paid something by the landlord, meaning your rent would be higher. But even so, for this to be economically practical, they were dramatizing a future in which non-rich people were desperate for a nice place to live. And young, pretty people find a way.
So as far as I can tell, it wasn't primarily about subordinating the female. It was about over-crowding and desperation among the common people.
Thanks, Zap, your're probably correct. Guess I read too much into it.
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