Death Without Dignity

In the dystopian film Soylent Green, Edward G. Robinson's character, Sol Roth, has lost the will to live. He presents himself at a euthanasia clinic, a bleak, brutalist building in the heart of the abandoned downtown. Sol is taken by two toga-clad officials into a futuristic chamber, disrobed, laid on a padded bier, and draped in a white cloth. The officials give him poison in a cup and depart after he drinks it. Immediately, a wraparound screen embedded in the chamber walls begins to play scenes from nature—deer running, birds chirping, grain flowing—set to Edvard Grieg's "Aase's Death" and Mozart's "Pastoral." It is a chilling scene that forces viewers to wrestle with the indignity of even the most apparently "dignified" of suicides. Read Full Article »