Snowpiercer
Bong Joon Ho (dir.), Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt
I confess that I hadn’t been particularly interested in seeing this SF movie — its premise seemed so absurd — but I spotted it as a DVD in our local library and thought I might give it a try. I hadn’t seen any detailed reviews, or read any commentary by the director, so it was a bit of a leap in the dark.
The premise does indeed seem absurd at first glance. In a desperate attempt to stop global warming, humanity tries a geo-engineering effort which goes disastrously wrong and plunges the Earth into a new ice age. That isn’t the absurd part — indeed, it seems all too possible. No, the absurdity is that a small group of the remnants of humanity clamber aboard a train to save themselves. The train circles the globe and never stops moving, not for a moment. One can think of far more sensible arrangements to save humanity!
The story relates to a group of desperate people at the tail-end of the train who stage a revolution and try to force their way to the front, where the privileged people live.
Part-way through watching the movie I realised that the absurdity is intentional, and indeed, a key part of the director’s intent. There’s a particular point where the rebellious tail-enders open a door to the next carriage to be confronted with a phalanx of balaclava-clad men armed with hatchets. A bloody battle ensues. But part-way through the conflict, there is an announcement that the train is about to cross a particular bridge. Which marks New Year’s Day. (Did I say that the train takes exactly one year to circle the globe?). And so conflict ceases while everyone celebrates New Year for a minute or so. Then the hacking resumes.
Things become more absurd as the group of rebels forces its way further and further forward, losing many members as it goes. There are carriages full of fish swimming in a giant aquarium. And a sushi bar.
At one point the rebels reach a classroom of primary-school children being taught about the history of the train. The contrast between the filthy, ragged-clothed tail-enders and the pretty, colourfully dressed students and their teacher is marked. The absurdity goes up another notch and it was probably at that point that I realised that the movie of which Snowpiercer reminds me most is Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Dystopian science-fiction which uses absurdity and a very black humour as a spotlight on the contradictions of contemporary life. Then I noted that one of the main characters is called Gilliam and I knew that this similarity was no coincidence but a deliberate homage.
There’s an obvious reading of the movie as a metaphor of the way that the rich and privileged treat the poor with such contempt, and the consequences of a long-simmering anger among the poor for that reason. But that’s a pretty superficial reading which misses the delight of the dark comedy. For example, Tilda Swinton’s masterfully comic diatribe to the tail-enders about their proper station in life. One of the tail-enders has thrown a shoe at her, striking her on the head. She takes the shoe and uses it as a metaphor (imagine this in a heavy Yorkshire accent):
“Would you wear a shoe on your head? No, of course you wouldn’t wear a shoe on your head. A shoe doesn’t belong on your head. A shoe belongs on your foot. A hat belongs on your head. I am a hat. You are a shoe. I belong on the head. You belong on the foot.”
There’s some great acting in this movie. Chris Evans is Curtis, the leader of the rebellion. Evans is here given a chance to demonstrate that he really can act (unlike his role as Captain America in the Marvel movies). There’s a harrowing scene towards the end of the movie when he talks about the horrors of the first weeks the tail-enders suffered after boarding the train. Too many people, not enough food. You can imagine the result. Evans really makes you feel the horror and his trauma.
Tilda Swinton is almost unrecognisable in her role as Minister Mason, one of the apparatchiki of the authorities, a bureaucrat with life and death powers over the tail-enders. She puts in a terrific performance (but then, I’ve always been a big fan of hers).
John Hurt has a lesser role as Gilliam, the aging revolutionary who once ruled the tail-enders but is now passing on the torch to Curtis. Ed Harris gets a brief but important role towards the end of the movie as Wilford, the engineer who designed and built the Snowpiercer train.
The director Bong Joon Ho is Korean, and he gives important roles to two excellent Korean actors: Kang-ho Song as the drug-crazed engineer who designed the locks of the gates between the carriages, coerced into opening them; and his daughter, played by Ah-sung Ko. These two take on unexpectedly important roles as the story goes on.
In what I think is another tribute to Terry Gilliam, there’s just a hint of 12 Monkeys right at the end of the movie as a lone polar bear roams the snowy landscape.
So, I ended up really enjoying and appreciating this movie, which wasn’t at all what I expected. Thoroughly recommended.
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