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 What is this why is Captain America in a movie about class warfare? Wikipedia posted:Snowpiercer (Korean: 설국열차; hanja: 雪國列車; RR: Seolgungnyeolcha) is a 2013 South Korean-American science fiction action film based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette.The film is directed by Bong Joon-ho, and written by Bong and Kelly Masterson. The film marks Bong's English-language debut; approximately 80% of the film was shot in English. South Korea has been making a name for itself with some seriously cool action flicks that have recently made headway in American markets - this film is an excellent example of bridging the foreign-language gap by giving American audiences a film with a recognizable lead (Chris Evans) while still holding onto the roots of South Korean action sensibilities. As an argument for American's seeing more South Korean movies, I think it does a drat fine job. But that's not what the movie is all about. This is a movie with an agenda, an action flick that has something to say that you might not expect from a lack-luster blurb. quote:In this sci-fi epic, a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet. The final survivors board the SNOWPIERCER, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine. When cryptic messages incite the passengers to revolt, the train thrusts full-throttle towards disaster. A bit more on the plot: Curtis (Chris Evans) is a reluctant, yet steel-nosed leader of the revolutionaries in coach. Being largely unwanted guests aboard Wilford's (Ed Harris) Atlas Shrugged-style ultra-luxury train for 18 years of the apocalypse, Curtis and his group of mismatched class-warriors finally have a plan to seize the engine and take control of their destinies. Curtis leans on Gilliam (John Hurt) as he navigates his uneasy position of power within the revolution. The two have identified a first-class passenger and security expert, Namgoong Minsoo (Kang-ho Song), who can get them to the engine, but first they'll have to break him out of prison. I only thought about seeing it because I'm a sucker for sci-fi dystopia, post-apocalyptic rigmarole, and then I saw that it's holding onto a 94% on rottentomatoes. My curiosity was officially piqued, so I found it playing at my local theater and gave it a shot. Sadly I was one of only two people in the theater. This is a movie that is unrelentingly honest, refusing to pull its punches. Its roots as a graphic novel are apparent even if I didn't know that going in. While I was willing to accept the basic premise of the movie, that people hosed up the world through our own special form of hubris by trying to take a shortcut into saving it (hint: this is a lesson the rest of the movie hammers home) I was still asking myself, "but why are they on a train?" It makes sense that people have to band together to survive the brutal cold, but there have to be a million better places to survive the desolate hellscape the world has become thanks to man's latest folly. The movie answers that question, justifies its setting, and does a whole lot more along the way to build a believable world through its characterization and set design. As Curtis journeys from the tail of the train to its engine we learn more about the unique culture that has grown aboard this perpetual-motion coffin - things like the disgusting origins of the ubiquitous protein bars, the growth of hallucinogenic industrial waste, and the reason this train was built in the first place. The journey itself is fraught with heavy-handed metaphor (this is a movie that is unapologetic about its discussion of class), but it is done in such a way that is completely organic to the film. The movie doesn't revel in spectacle, violence is brutal and personal (or in some cases, disturbingly de-personalized). There is a scene about 3/4 through the movie where Curtis and one of his antagonists engage in a shootout between cars across a winding valley. There is a deadly focus as each side concentrates first on breaking through the reinforced glass by pouring round after round into the same spot, and then a cold-calculation as they each take carefully executed shots trying to thread their rounds through these miniscule targets. It's a sequence that doesn't end in a climax as our hero pulls off the perfect shot, but rather serves to build tension and illustrate the deeply personal struggle each side is engaging in. For me, this movie came together with its ending, not a twist, but a logical conclusion to all the narrative and ideological momentum of the film. I would compare to I Am Legend in that it's clear the ending we got here was one that could have easily been stripped of any meaning via over-engineered focus grouping. Thankfully the directors original vision remained intact. Wikipedia posted:The American rights were acquired by Harvey Weinstein in 2012, based on the script and some completed footage, with a plan for wide release in the United States and Canada. However, it was reported that Weinstein wanted to trim several minutes from the end of the film, which led to a dispute with the filmmaker. In February 2014 it was agreed that the film would remain intact at 125 minutes, but there would be a platform release, meaning the film would open in only in major markets, expanding in distribution only if sales showed promise. It seems clear to me what Weinstein wanted to cut from the film, and I'm incredibly thankful that it was left in. The heart of this movie exists in the questions the ending poses, a set of questions I wasn't expecting, and I think you won't find in many wide-release American action flicks. Spoilers below where I talk about that. The movie ends with a dramatic change of perspective. Whereas Curtis had been our protagonist throughout the entirety of the film, in the aftermath of his decision to destroy the train we are no longer following his story anymore. I was left wondering why the film focused on Yona (Ah-sung Ko) and Tim as they left the train to set foot into the snow-pocalypse. I wasn't sure what to make of it, I had spent the last two hours rooting for Curtis to take apart the powers that be and institute a class-less paradise, and all of a sudden he was nowhere to be found. This change in protagonists (because certainly the movie begs us to wonder what will happen next to these previously tertiary characters) is the heart of this movie, and why I'm glad to know that it was released untouched. Curtis is a figure for radical revolution - he leads a class-struggle aimed at uprooting all existing power structures. And he does it without remorse, sacrificing even Edgar (Jamie Bell) who is his best friend/albatross/atonement for his past sins. Curtis reminds us throughout the film that his struggle can only be successful if he learns from the history of revolutionary struggles, that is how he is able to out-maneuver a system that has brutalized him for 18 years. Of course, we learn at the end of the film that he hasn't outmaneuvered it at all, he is still caught in that same savagery, being manipulated into leading others to their deaths. So when he chooses to destroy the seat of power, dismantling every vestige of the old system by literally running it off its tracks, the movie asks us to recognize that he no longer deserves a place of primacy in the new world order he has created. His struggle has always been about those too weak to fight for themselves, or too unaware to recognize the system as a brutalizing machine, but once he has accomplished his goal and destroyed the old power, he is no longer the focus of our story. The new world is about people who have the ability to re-envision the future (a literal sort of re-envisioning is suggested in the case of Yona). This is a movie that lends itself (obviously) extremely well to a Marxist reading, and, I believe, raises a lot of interesting questions rooted in the history of class warfare. There are people who are a lot smarter than me who can probably suss out all the details, but I was left with a strong appreciation for what was an apparent summer action movie willing to delve deeply into the arguments surrounding radicalism vs. incrementalism. In much the same way I think Edge of Tomorrow is getting short-shrift from the culture at-large, I think Snowpiercer is set to suffer similarly without word of mouth. I would encourage anyone even slightly interested in graphic novel adaptations, South Korean action, post-apocalypse sci-fi, or CAPTAIN AMERICA CHRIS EVANS to give this move a chance. Please, be smarter than me and talk about all the obvious symbolism I missed or mischaracterized! Medoken fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 03:33
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Al Cu Ad Solte posted:I wanted to like this film. It certainty has heart and soul behind it, but there were just too many questions that popped up that were offered no explanation. I think you're right that some questions raised in the plot were unresolved, however I don't feel like they were ultimately detrimental to the overall film. I think the director was looking to put large ideas together in a novel setting and ask some fundamental questions about the nature of order and anarchy, and while doing this some details were glossed over. It didn't slow me down in enjoying the film, but I could see how it might upset the experience for some. To try to answer a couple of your questions: I think there was an extremely underplayed, perhaps even edited out subplot that explained Kronol in more detail. My guess is that the Yono's fledgling clairvoyance is tied to the antagonist in the suit who we clearly see strangled/stabbed to death earlier suddenly get up and pull the kukri from his side later. I think this is also tied to Namgoong Minsoo getting shot and then moments later fighting off a horde of tweakers on the engine-bridge, and even to the blue goop the thugs rub on that one man's arm just before they punish him by locking it outside of the train. My pet theory is that Kronol is more than industrial waste/hallucinogen/bomb, and that it has more unexplained properties that link back to each of these events. The axes make sense if you believe Wilford was telling the truth about his use of revolution as a form of social engineering. The guards had probably mostly run out of bullets during previous riots, and decided to prepare for the future riots with other techniques with more longevity, namely the axes and knives. The nightvision goggles I couldn't answer for, but if Wilford created an entirely self-sustaining train, and he was as militantly apocalypse ready as it appears from the outset, then maybe he stocked his luxury train with all sorts of limited use goodies for his amusement/extreme what-if scenarios. As for residential space, I don't think we saw all of the different cars on the train. Looking at the aerial shots when the train derails, it seems to me that there are a lot more cars that were glossed over during Curtis' journey to the engine. And most importantly, the purpose of the tailies: this gets to one of the basic themes of the film. Wilford is obsessed with his idea that the train is a closed ecosystem that requires careful, sometimes brutal, social engineering. He has the mentality, often seen in people obsessed with trains, of rigorous systematization. It's repeated over and over again that everyone has a place on the train, a purpose that they serve. The tailies, however don't apparently do anything to benefit the rest of the train, but you have to remember that this train was never meant to be the last bastion of civilization. The train is a manifestation of Wilford's Galt-like obsession, one that allowed him and other ultra-rich 1 percenters to retreat from the rest of the world. Coincidentally at the same time they chose to begin their permanent vacation the apocalypse happened. It's never explained why, or who chose to bring the tailies aboard, but one can imagine that as the world was ending, someone aboard the train, perhaps Gilliam, as a kind of mercy brought on these refugees without any real plan for how to feed them, where to keep them, or what to do with them afterwards. Ultimately this purposeless act of mercy led to their cannibalism as Wilford (or someone) figured out how to manufacture the protein blocks that sustained the tailies. In fact one can imagine that Gilliam, being the empathetic one, advocated for the tailies initially, and his sacrifice led Wilford to create the protein block car when he realized that the tailies could be of some systemic use to the train. Wilford explains to us what this use is: they are literally replacement parts. The engine is spoken of as a living thing, when a piece of it breaks and can't be repaired, it is referred to as being 'extinct'. The tailies in this sense are the organic mechanism through which the train can ultimately repair itself. Additionally, Wilford has constructed a regimental class-system, one that requires, like Plato's five regimes, a large underclass. This serves a psychological purpose for the rest of the passengers (look how bad it could be, in a real rather than conceptual sense) as well as for reasons of propaganda (which can be seen in the classroom scene and the way the students without hesitation condescend towards the tailies). The fact that the tailies aren't shoveling coal, or something else equally anachronistic, is an invitation by the film for us to ask questions about poverty and privilege, first and third world relationships, and the nature of otherizing. The tailies exist in the world of the train only to be brutalized. They are a commodified good, traded between the first class passengers at will, any work they perform is incidental, it doesn't define their station on the train. They exist solely to be the lowest possible class, in order to be exploited by those with more social power than them. In the shots we get of the rest of the train it is clear the first class passengers live in extreme luxury, their world is not defined by scarcity and rationing, but by leisure and luxury. As a class they are insensate, they brutalize the tailies by their very nature, and do so not for self-preservation, or "greater good" economics, but because they have chosen to build a system that can do nothing else but otherize those with less socioeconomic power than them.
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Jul 3, 2014 06:02
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Bulging Nipples posted:The Raid is Indonesian and Ong Bak is Thai, or am I reading this wrong I don't know what I was thinking either, actually I do, somehow my head connected The Raid to this because of its structural similarities and then I don't even know about Ong-bak. I'm going to edit that part out, cause it's honestly pretty embarrassing. Thanks for catching me on it. Cubicle Gangster posted:I really enjoyed the movie, it's fun, exciting and does that whole korea thing of being incredibly silly while also deadly serious at the same time. I found Chris Evans' delivery of "I know what people taste like and babies taste the best" to be quite inappropriately hilarious. Medoken fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 19:16
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