Yet, much as the film is woven into dreams of what the future looked like in 1973, the social and environmental issues at the heart of the film have never felt more urgent, and the warning it sends are more troubling than ever before.
As with so much great science-fiction, the film says a lot about the era from which it emerged, specifically the point at which the optimism of post-war America was starting to sour after years of failure in Vietnam, while also being on the cusp of the Watergate scandal. A film set in the future (2022), that cannot visually escape the 1970s (when it was made), while narratively evoking the hard-boiled detective novels of 1940s and ‘50s.
A cautionary tale that has entered the public consciousness and cultural firmament, to watch Soylent Green (Sun 28 July, 14:00 at Curzon Cinema & Arts - Trip to Curzon leaving Watershed at 11:00) with modern eyes can almost touch on the absurd.
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