Erik's thoughts on "Snowpiercer"

A sci-fi yarn celebrating glamor and grime with a low-budget aesthetic, Bong Joon-ho's future-set Snowpiercer often feels like a cross between The Wizard of Oz (a journey down a single path to meet The Creator) and The Hunger Games (the upper-class inspired by the flamboyant fashion of yesteryear), between a social satire and an action movie steeped in revolutionary causes. The film, based on a French graphic novel, is pretty simple — with Earth now a frozen-over wasteland, a constantly in-motion train stores the planet's remaining survivors (divided by class), continuously circling around the planet until a hopefully eventual environmental change deems it safe to step outdoors again — and its storytelling rather straightforward: placed conveniently at the back, a group of the lower-class least-of-the-least come up with a plan to fight back against the authoritative enforcers at the head of the train (although the train is not a literal pyramid of ascending power, it might as well be) and so they march forth, compartment by compartment, to confront the man who created all this.

Yes, the themes are heavy, and often times, a little too on the nose  — the lower class get relegated to the back of the train, bringing to mind incidents that prompted the African-American Civil Rights movement — and the narrative progression, almost by design, repetitive. But the lighter moments make do, i.e. the characters relishing the chance to inhale cigarette smoke for the first time in years. Also humorous is that each train compartment serves as another take on a fucked up version of the ideal desired life, be it the attentive and all-too-ready-to-be-brainwashed children reciting the mantra of their leader or the older twentysomethings engaging in rave, club-like behavior and going all out on excess. Make no mistake, drugs are a nuisance here, but Bong Joon-ho finds a way, late in the film, to incorporate them as a useful play on the tropes of MacGyver.

The film's joys then come out of similar excitement a video game player feels when he advances to the next level to face the subsequent "boss"; each new train compartment reveal feels like it should open with a "Level 2! Level 3!..." introductory announcement, indicating that by moving forward, they have advanced to the next round. And the further you get in "the game," the harder it gets, as ammo (thought to be a thing of the past on this train) is later introduced as being in possession of the evil henchmen. Snowpiercer's narrative isn't the only thing that feels modeled after a stage-by-stage video game, however. Its visual aesthetic occasionally mirrors one as well: as the train goes through an extended tunnel, literally keeping our protagonists in the dark, the film's masked villains don night vision goggles, allowing Bong Joon-ho the opportunity to indulge in some participatory POV shots.

The film's cast is adequate enough, mixing some faces quite familiar to American moviegoers (Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Octavia Spencer, Tilda Swinton) with some much appreciated Bong Joon-ho regulars. Swinton, doing her best impression of a Jerry Lewis impression,craves her chance to play the diabolical character equivalent of Mr. Potatohead (fake nose, fake teeth....), while Evans tries his best to deliver a monologue about how delicious babies taste somewhat hauntingly. And the big cameo late in the film is a nice surprise, if only the character served a greater purpose than to deliver mucho exposition and to prove he's the worst of the worst as evidenced by the size of his telephone.

While Snowpiercer doesn't come close to matching the quality of recent Bong Joon-ho efforts like the quirkily sad Mother or the environmentally-conscious monster movie The Host, it still serves up some delights. The CGI exteriors, whether shoddy or up-to-par, have a certain otherworldly charm to them, and that goes double for the film's brief violent outbursts. I could have done without the perhaps too easily wrapped-up conclusion (and the sacrifice Evans' character has to make and the way it relates to his arm/dark history on the train), but the film ends with an poetic visual that has two intriguing options: 1.) our surviving characters have quite a future ahead of them or  2.) they are the afternoon's main course on Mother Nature's food chain.


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