Snowpiercer: Better Than A Poke In The Eye With A Sharp Stick

snowpiercer-international-posterThe best thing about South Korean writer/director Bong Joon-Ho’s first English-language movie, Snowpiercer, is everything in it that’s not American. It’s in English, it’s full of American actors, it has all the trappings of a summer effects flick, yet the best parts are the ones you’d never find in an American movie, and they’re the ones that kept me entertained.

Snowpiercer’s failing is that it’s simultaneously overwritten and underwritten. It’s a blatant political allegory whose obvious points are muddled and vague. If you can imagine such a thing.

It’s set on a train that runs in a loop over much of the globe. Eighteen years earlier, an experiment to end climate change went terribly awry and froze solid the Earth (perhaps they seeded the clouds with Ice-9?). All life is dead but that on the train. We meet the people at the back of the train first. They live a grim, steam-punkish existence, the poor bastards. Everything is dirty and brown. There are no windows. They subsist on gelatinous rectangular protein bars. Armed troops keep them in their place.

Gilliam lurks behind Curtis

Gilliam lurks behind Curtis

Curtis (Chris Evans) isn’t going to take it any more. Seems he’s got a plot well underway, and it’s almost go-time. He’s encouraged by old-timer Gilliam (John Hurt), who remembers well past failed revolutions.

It’s not long before Curtis enacts the plan. The poor folk of the rear attack. Car by car, they move up the train, headed for the engine, and the man who began it all, Wilford (Ed Harris).

One choice I liked was not to show any of the rich people prior to our heroes seeing them. We begin on the back of the train, and only see the subsequent cars as our heroes reach them. In this way, every car is a surprise. Or new, anyway. What’s not a surprise is that as they move forward, the train becomes ever ritzier.

This is going to hurt

This is going to hurt

Early on they reach a car with windows, allowing Curtis and the others a view of the outside world, frozen over. Next they find out what goes into those protein bars: delicious bugs. Next is—drat!—a car full of stocking-masked men weilding axes and knives. The two groups face off. One masked man produces a large fish and slices open its belly. Two other men bloody their axes in the fish’s guts. This is one of those moments I mentioned. I’m going to assume this makes perfect sense to certain Asian audiences, something about bloodying one’s weapons before a fight. To my eyes, it’s mysteriously creepy. The ensuing fight, a long one, is likewise a far cry from anything in an American summer blockbuster in its excessive violence.

Perhaps the best scene comes when they enter the aquarium car. Wilford’s aide, Mason (Tilda Swinton, with crazy fake teeth and giant eyeglasses), held hostage by Curtis’s rebels, asks if they’d like sushi. And there in the car is a sushi counter manned by a chef. Who wouldn’t want to pause for a sushi snack mid-revolution?

Do not question your teacher

Do not question your teacher

Another scene I liked was the one in the school car, in which a chirpy teacher (Alison Pill) teaches the history of the great and wise Wilford to the little childrens. It’s a surreal break from the murder and mayhem, with a sense of humor that would never show up in a mainstream American movie.

Ultimately, the make-up of the train cars isn’t especially logical. But it makes allegorical sense, and that’s what the movie is interested in.

Too bad its obvious allegory is delivered in such a confused way. Characters die off suprisingly often, but without evident meaning, aside from the general: people will die in revolutions. Most of the characters feel unimportant to the story; they exist only to be killed. This is especially odd in the case of Gilliam, who dies almost off-screen. It’s later revealed that his importance to the train is far greater than we suspected. Strange that he would disappear with so little fanfare.

Namgoong and his daughter

Namgoong and his daughter

Song Kang-ho plays Namgoong, an expert in electronics, banished by Wilford into cold storage. Curtis needs him to open the doors to each new car. Kang-ho goes along with the plan, but he’s got other ideas brewing. He thinks the cold outside is survivable.

Which brings us to the ending. I’ll describe it in general, but this is still a bit spoilery. You have been warned.

After passing through lavish dining cars, a rave, and a drug den, among others, Curtis, Namgoong, and Namgoong’s adult daughter, Yona (Go Ah-sung), the only survivors of the revolution, reach the massive door to Wilford’s engine-car. Namgoong reveals his plan: he’s not going to blow open Wilford’s door; he’s going to blow open the door to the outside world.

Tilda Swinton gets weird

Tilda Swinton gets weird

Some business ensues, and Curtis finds himself in the engine room chatting with the elusive Wilford. Wilford gives a speech about how the train is a perfectly balanced ecosystem, with everyone in their place, doing their job, fulfilling their purpose. It’s not a well written speech. Wilford says what you know he has to say in this allegory, but he says it so terribly you wonder if maybe he didn’t say it after all. Curtis, naturally, having come so far, is the man meant to take over for Wilford, who it must be admitted leads a none-to-perfect life alone at the front of the train. Curtis is to be the new leader, the one who perpetuates the system. Which system is stratified as it must be to ensure the survival of everyone.

Looks like Curtis is going to go for it, when a last horror is revealed.

At which point Namgoong blows open the train. The train does not, let’s say, survive the blast.

The train

The train

The ending is about the last thing you’d ever see in an American action movie. The political meaning is clear: you cannot change the system by working within it. It must be destroyed, no matter the cost in lives. Something new must—and can—be built in its place.

I like a movie that makes a statement. I only wish it made it with any kind of graceful clarity.

Everything about Snowpiercer feels muddled and uncertain, while at the same time being knock-you-in-the-head-with-a-two-by-four obvious. It’s a lumpy, unweildy movie, where you want it to be sleek and well-oiled. And yet I still found much of it entertaining. It’s just off-kilter enough to feel different in a world where explodey action movies are ever more safe, predictable, boring, and meaningless.

Fish car!

Fish car!

5 responses on “Snowpiercer: Better Than A Poke In The Eye With A Sharp Stick

  1. Yeah, just saw this last night and generally agree – the premise of moving forward through a train, discovering what awaits in each car, and discovering new ways to choreograph violence were what made it entertaining. Also Tilda Swinton.

    I thought that by trying to explain the engineering of the train a little too much, the film made the flawed logic of the world that much more apparent. I’m trying to think of good examples of of the type of science fiction that is mostly allegory with hints of logic; just enough to give a sensible shape to the world and explain the characters’ motivations. Maybe Blade Runner is the best example? The original Star Trek series?

    I also want to note that Anne and I saw this in a theater with plush reclining seats, blankets, and a waitstaff from whom we could order delicious snacks and froofy drinks, which is the most delightful way to watch a movie about train cars jammed full of people living in their own filth, surviving on jellied protein bars and baby meat.

    • Wow, you two worked the viewing experience. Nicely done.

      Science fiction at its best is always allegorical. But it’s a balance, of course, between what your story ‘means’ and the actual telling of an interesting, logical story. When the allegory gets too much in the way, everything else tends to fall apart. Which is why it’s hard to think of good examples of ‘mostly allegorical’ science fiction movies.

  2. I remember The Cube fondly, as one Komurka of death after another becomes revealed, with barely a false hope of actual escape. I highly recommend it!

    I have truly enjoyed the Korean perspective in movie making (with a few glaring exceptions). I will seek this one out…

    • The Cube, not a bad example. A great example of how to make a movie on a budget–two identical rooms! That’s it! But yes, that one is highly allegorical. Also, maybe, to a fault once it hits the ending. But a neat little movie all the same.

      • Speaking of Korean films, just watched Bong Joon-ho’s early film Barking Dogs Never Bite. It’s plenty odd and I balked at it at first but it’s grown on me over the past few days. Very different sensibility to ours.

  3. Pingback: [영화게시판] 설국열차에 관한 흥미로운 사실들 - My Prison·

Leave a Reply to Supreme BeingCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.