“Snowpiercer” (2013)
Welcome, to the real world
Welcome, to the real world
I’ve lead a somewhat circuitous route to this, the latest of my spoiler free ramblings on what are never really film reviews at all but mere human observations. I’ve watched and enjoyed the spin-off streaming television series and with the reservations and judgements that coalesce here with the original Bong Joon Ho directed film of 2013. I also liked but didn’t love the director’s fifth cinematic film release Okja in 2017 but adored his follow up, Parasite, two years later. I remember seeing this film on opening day at my local cinema and being repulsed and shocked at a marvellous turning of the tables on the audience akin to the films of Jordan Peele. I have long described Peele’s films (as I eagerly await the release of his latest, Nope, in August) as “horribly brilliant”. Get Out and Us are indeed horribly brilliant as they both point the camera inward at us, the audience, to prompt our reactions to a world around us and a world of recent living memory. Can we stomach the realisations being posited by the director? Can we see the parasites living among us? Can we see the four decades old degradation of a societal edifice that is crumbling around us right now? Dare we see it?
All of these films are horribly brilliant and so is Snowpiercer. Not as good as the three long television seasons allow for in the spin-off but continuing on a theme, I find the spin-off to be horribly brilliant too, but in a more darkly and dystopian way, and here’s the rub: I see the parallels with a real world being created in front of our disbelieving eyes and like the infamous train of this film, it can’t or more worryingly wont, stop.
It’s just a film I hear you scream, but even on the flimsy surface there is a real mirror to a world that has regressed dramatically and irrevocably in just four decades since the 1980’s. The Snowpiercer train and its “Sacred Engine” is a “rattling Ark” and the last of humanity clinging onto the hope that this speeding ark will both keep them safe as well as safeguarding them from a world plunged into a premature ice age in order to prevent a devastating heating of the planet. It’s an entire world within a long rattling train, from the opulence of first class and a school, hairdressers, nightclub and medical facilities all supported by a sauna, fitness and the availability of frozen fresh food. This world is brightly lit, colourful and without seemingly a care in a dying world, but just a few carriages along from this end of the world utopia is the “Tail” full of stowaways who scrambled their way on board the perpetually moving train in sheer desperation at the life ending alternative. This end of the train is dark, dank, grimy and blackly dirty and whereas passengers mere carriages away are fine dining, the inhabitants of the train’s tail have to make do with a disgusting jelly like substance that is all too prevalent in today’s Media news, as well as a series of stories that are headline news around the world rather than hilarious spoof articles from satirical magazines such as The Onion.
Whether it’s the film or the streaming series, my immediate question is if the world is ending or near extinction and your only hope is a constantly moving train and a Noah’s Ark of hope that one day the earth will be habitable again, why is there such a dystopian class war and why is it so abhorrent? These are rhetorical and existential questions and so is questioning why the train needs such heavily armed guards? Why is their policing of the desperate and most in need so bloodily brutal? Why is one train carriage so seemingly oblivious to what is going on mere feet away from them?
“Control the engine and you control the world” and your train population’s pre-ordained position or “order” is under your control. Then you have a mystical benefactor figure who’s often heard but never seen. A godlike figure who’s pronouncements are relayed by his very own Chief of Staff type figure (brilliantly portrayed in both film and television series alike) a little off kilter, incredibly dedicated and ostensible cult like quasi leader. Don’t believe the “misplaced optimism of doom” and remember “The Revolt of the 7” are dire warnings meted out to the cold, hungry and desperate members of a dying society that’s being essentially left to die. A black market in drugs, a revolutionary leader, a weakened populace just glad to be safe from the ravages of an instant death outside, families clinging to each other in desperation and simply accepting their lot in life now. Order is now easy to maintain.
Snowpiercer is indeed horribly brilliant with the only major variation from the television series being the early demise of key central characters. Class struggle. The reimaging of a society. Allocation of resources. Fear. Propaganda. Order. A monied elite. A desperate populace fed on, well, you’ll find out! Any of this sound familiar?
They used to call this “predictive programming” back in the day when so called “conspiracy theories” weren’t as cool and hip as they are today. Replace the train with a “Smart City” retain the goon like soldiers to retain your order and replace food with the jelly, and we’re only scratching the surface of a technocratic and technetronic project that’s been in the works since before I was born.
Anyway, it’s just a film.
Just don’t eat the jelly! The people offering it to you certainly wouldn’t.
Thanks for reading. For more light hearted yet still spoiler free fare, please see the links below for the three most recently published articles within my film archives:
“The Little Things” (2021)
Denzel Washington masterclass in a film that fades awaymedium.com
“Road to Perth” (2021)
5 reasons for liking this road trip across Australiamedium.com
“No Man of God (2021)
Excellent addition to the grotesque tale of Ted Bundymedium.com