30 or 40 minutes into Snowpiercer the word “freeloader” is used. It’s pushed through the fake teeth of Mason (Tilda Swinton), the skeletal, figurehead ruler of a train that is circling the globe with all of the world’s living humans kept inside. She directs it to the huddled masses at the back of the train.
18 years prior, the temperatures of the globe had risen to an unlivable level. A gas was launched into the atmosphere to drop the degrees back down to life-sustaining. It worked. But there was a miscalculation in the amount that was released and humanity was plunged into a second ice age. An eccentric magnate named Wilford built a train for the survivors, but a ticket had to be purchased. Those at the back of the train were people who didn’t purchase tickets. They forced their way on.
The ticket carriers had to sacrifice a few cars for the poor rebels who couldn’t afford to enjoy living through the apocalypse. The rich kept the guns, delivered black bars of protein to the crammed cars in the back and accentuated their sections of the train to accommodate education, discos, aquariums and symphonies. Of course, there have been revolts through the years.
Snowpiercer picks up after previous failed revolts and at the start of a new one. It’s led by Curtis (Chris Evans, Captain America himself) and the limbless Gilliam (John Hurt, whose character’s name appears to be a tip of the hat to his Brazil director Terry Gilliam).
Last summer there was another post-apocalyptic class system sci-fi action film, but Elysium didn’t click with audiences. The reason why Snowpiercer works so much better than Elysium is because it isn’t just a black-and-white, poor vs. rich fable. Snowpiercer understands that there are a lot of systems that have to run in unison to create such divisions of haves and have nots. If you hear the term “freeloader” aimed at humans in rags, here, whose limbs are occasionally frozen off to quell potential upheaval, you probably have the same pit in your stomach reaction when it’s tossed around today in our current political climate. It either angers you because people deserve to be treated better and not have their worth determined by their bank account, or it angers you because you agree that people expect too much to be given to them.
Even though we’re following rebels from the back of the train as they fight their way to the front there is a mystery of director Bong Joon-ho‘s ultimate intent. That’s the beauty of Snowpiercer: we’re following a band of men and women who are fighting to get to the front of the train, but they don’t know what is ahead. Each train car is a mystery to them that is revealed to the audience at the same time. They know they want to get to the front, but they also don’t know what they want to demand because they haven’t made it there yet. Everything is new to them and as they keep seeing more, does that change how much or what it is that they want?
Each train car the rebels overtake offers an entirely different world. It’s like if Scott Pilgrim fought his way through Holy Mountain. There are a number of very exciting set-pieces that should not be given away (but prepare to grin for Alison Pill and find yet one more way to admire Swinton; the female villain is one of the best achievements of the big entertainments of 2014).
Related: Fred Topel says Snowpiercer is action-packed, but not without problems
By the time the film closes we’ve been guided through an exhilarating, videogame-fighting infographic of the post-globalization world ecosystem: climate change, child labor and population control. And it’s fun, too! In either inaction or action Snowpiercer says we’re pretty much fucked. However, Snowpiercer is certainly not a nihilistic film.
This is the first English-language film from Korea’s biggest director and Bong (The Host, Mother and Memories of Murder) delivers. His filmography has spanned different genres (monster movie, mystery, thriller now sci-fi), but they all have something delightful in common: a pause for a miscalculation. Bong loves an accident. Not an accident that explodes but a physical mess-up that makes his heroes and villains more human. There are those playful moments in Snowpiercer, many involving Swinton (and again, a great scene with Pill).
Where Snowpiercer surprises, though, is with two extended monologues placed toward the end of the film. They are given by two characters and they both qualify as a miscalculation because neither monologue gets the desired response. But they both show the distance between both ends of the train more than the actual fighting movement from back to front. After the rush of seeing what was behind each door, that might be a letdown to some. But not to me. Snowpiercer is a fantastic film: it’s both fun and tragic and is ultimately a warning to everyone in the present, no matter which side of any of its debates you fall on. Lest everything really is too little too late.
Brian Formo is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel. You can follow him on Twitter at @BrianEmilFormo.
