By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.9
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Starring: Chris Evans | Jamie Bell | John Hurt | Ko Ah-sung | Octavia Spencer | Song Kang-ho | Tilda Swinton
Country: czech_republic, france, south_korea, united_states
Year: 2014
Running time: 126
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706620/combined
Jason says: “A Korean director making an English-language movie from a French graphic novel may seem like a random combination, but it’s really not: Both Korean genre film and French bandes dessinées often blur genre lines and forms, while English certainly helps get even a modestly-budgeted film made and distributed. Thus we wind up with SNOWPIERCER, just as odd as director Bong Joon-ho’s previous foray into sci-fi action (Korean monster movie THE HOST, but also just as exciting.
“The high concept is out there: In 2014, an attempt to combat global warming backfired, plunging the world into a deadly new ice age. Fortunately, that’s also the year Wilford Industries unveiled their ‘Snowpiercer’ train system, which makes a complete circuit of the Earth every year, the perpetual-motion engine plowing through frozen obstructions. Seventeen-odd years later, Gilliam (John Hurt) and Curtis (Chris Evans), the unofficial leaders of the poor people at the tail end of the train, plot revolution, with Curtis and his young accomplice Edgar (Jamie Bell) planning to work their way to the front and seize control of the engine. To do that, they’ll need to break security expert Namgoong Minsu (Song Kang-ho) out of the prison car, although he turns out to be addicted to ‘Kronol’ and insists on bringing his daughter Yona (Ko Ah-sung) along. The group also includes Tanya (Octavia Spencer), whose son was taken without explanation. Everyone would like a chance to stick it to Minister Mason (Tilda Swinton), among others.
“There’s a long list of things in SNOWPIERCER that don’t make any sense whatsoever, and not just because the film’s American release could actually come after the mid-2014 disaster that kicks everything off. The logical contortions one must undertake in order to accept the premise are both reasonably well concealed and worth it, though, as the train is a striking metaphor for modern-day authoritarian states which have evolved a middle class but are still built upon oppression. That middle class serves as a buffer that, in this case, the revolutionaries must literally fight their way through.
“And fight they do! For all that the setting of a train may be deliberately constricting, Bong constructs some excellent action
sequences, including a centerpiece that starts at ‘ax fight’ and develops a twist or two from there. There’s a thoroughly unlikely but still highly entertaining shootout, and a few thrilling beats that come from the audience getting a look at the environment the train is passing through – which, of course, the audience only gets to see once the rebels have fought their way to a car that has windows.
“In some ways, the particulars of this dystopia are a bit familiar – I am guessing that it is no coincidence that John Hurt’s character is named ‘Gilliam’, the back of the train is the sort of grimy, dehumanizing world that fantasist Terry made his name on. As the action moves toward the front, a surreal cleanliness takes over, perhaps reaching its apex when the tail-enders burst into a classroom. There is a certain intrigue to the set-up, though; the very linearity of this world makes the familiar seem alien. And for all that some things like Yona’s apparent clairvoyance go relatively unexplained, Bong, co-writer Kelly Masterson (and presumably original creators Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, and Jean-Marc Rochette) have built a world whose details and history seem real enough to hold the improbable setting together.
“A good cast also helps with that. In some cases, it’s guys doing what they are best known for – John Hurt has been playing this sort of role for decades, and has it down to a science. Some folks, like Alison Pill, impress in brief appearances; others, like Tilda Swinton, manage to keep an absurd grotesquerie of a character amusing for the length of the film. Ed Harris is saved for toward the end – when someone needs to be very good to justify introducing a new character – and goes to town on the material Bong gives him. It’s the core of the cast that really holds things down, though: Chris Evans makes a surprisingly good reluctant hero, with Jamie Bell a pugnacious sidekick; Song Kang-ho is once again disheveled and clever, while Ko Ah-sung presents a sense of excitement at discovering new things without ever underselling the danger the characters are in. They’re good enough that Bong has no trouble making the climax of his movie not a big action scene, but a pair of long speeches (one in English, one in
Korean) before heading to the big showdown.
“That the movie has a relatively talky finale – and takes its time to get started – means it’s not particularly surprising that US distributor TWC is talking about cutting twenty minutes out of a 126-minute film. Hopefully that doesn’t come to pass; Bong Joon-ho has not made a bad movie yet and the transition to working in English hasn’t tripped him up any. 4.5 cats
“Seen 15 December 2013 at UGC Orient Express #2 (first-run, DCP).”
Kyle says: “When did routine screenings achieve the status of cultural christening ceremonies? Dual invited screenings of SNOWPIERCER at MOMA and the IFC Center announced the arrival of the film as An Event. The reverence with which the Weinstein Brothers were thanked and director Bong proclaimed an inductee into a celestial pantheon were positively unseemly. Where was someone with the slightest sense of irony to recall Alfred Hitchcock reminding Ingrid Bergman, ‘It’s only a movie.’
“The full house that packed MOMA for SNOWPIERCER was in a good mood, expectant of having a great time. As I was: Bong’s THE HOST (2006) reinvented the monster movie, and remains a personal favorite; and MOTHER (2008) was a harrowing crime drama of the limits of familial devotion. With a deafening explosion of the introduction to Marco Beltrami’s score, the title cards explain a failed experiment to arrest global warming that has rendered human beings extinct and the planet entombed in a new Ice Age. The few survivors end up on a speeding train that somehow circumnavigates the globe repeatedly.
“During the initial shots of the rear cars of the train, it is clear that we are in a rigidly stratified society that mirrors numerous other systems of oppression, from the cattle cars of the Holocaust to the current American oligarchy with the one percent holding sway over the rest. It is also clear that rebellion is in the air, from a relationship among Curtis (Chris Evans), Edgar (Jamie Bell), and Gilliam (John Hurt), and their warmth to the few children that roam the train until they are measured and mysteriously disappear, against armed militia that exact a dreadful toll on anyone who does not follow the rules precisely. Those rules are maniacally articulated by Mason, played with such feverish lunatic specificity by Tilda Swinton, as to make her Social Services in MOONRISE KINGDOM (2012) seem like a community organizer.
“Fans of the Dystopian Nightmare Genre will know where this is heading. A full-scale revolt breaks out, aided by Namgoong Minsoo (a seemingly drug-addled shaman warrior, who is unaccountably the only person noticing changes in global climate, and his daughter Yona (Ko Ah-sung). The rebels fight their way, car-by-car, battle-by-battle, proceeding ever closer to the front of the train. Their progress is reflected in a gradual breakdown of narrative logic, until it no longer matters whether the deified Wilford (Ed Harris) is an avatar of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, or Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid Apocalypse, or Ted Cruz and American politics, or simply an embittered, entitled rich white man who dines on the best steak with fine china and crystal goblets, having decided he alone can best supervise the future of humankind — literally the one percenter, patiently explaining the necessities of fascism, cannibalism and grotesque violence to the uncomprehending. What he does not bother to explain is why one of the train cars seems to be a gay bar in a perpetual Eighties Night Party. Or another a restaurant car specializing in sushi that can be neither understood nor appreciated. Or another a greenhouse that evokes Edward G. Robinson’s euthanasia in SOYLENT GREEN (1973), which has influenced another aspect of the narrative. I could go on, but why?
“The climax of this ridiculous movie, which I presume will be wildly successful, since its appeal to the lowest common denominator is unavoidable, is a spectacular CGI train crash, which fortunately ends Wilford’s life of crime and punishment. The final sequence, which almost justifies seeing the movie, is a confrontation between the two survivors of the crash, taking snow-piercing steps into the harsh climate for the first time since the end of the world, and a polar bear, neither having ever seen anything like each other before. The audience is denied even the chance to savor this moment, since the end titles were rudely interrupted by the necessity of commencing a Q & A immediately and experiencing further relentless bloviating by the makers of this movie. I escaped into the cleansing night air as soon as possible. 2 cats.
“Seen Tuesday, June 24, 2014, Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1, Museum of Modern Art, New York.”
Thom says: “Most definitely, South Korean director Bong has an impressive curriculum vitae with me including MEMORIES OF MURDER, THE HOST, & MOTHER. This is his first venture with an English-speaking cast and production values not all from South Korea, plus a source from a French novel. Most of it works with panache and a script that continues to hurtle along.
“A failed global warming experiment has wiped out the entire population on earth except those fortunate enough to have boarded the Snowpiercer, a highly evolved train that is continually circumnavigating the globe at astronomical speeds. The train has been highly stratified in the usual economic way with the lower-classed, destitute, unskilled, and malcontent in the rear of the train and as the story moves forward though the sensational length of the train various societies emerge in an overly-obvious way. The Lower Depths people decide to revolt and move through the train towards their goal of finding the real Power Broker of the train’s world. The basic problem I had with the film is that some of the dialogue is corny to the point of being trite. Was it a language interpretation?
“The best attribute of the film was in the casting director who chose some sensational talents. Of course, the exceptional Tilda Swinton stands out in her chameleon style as Mason the freaky factotum to the oily, evil Wilford, Ed Harris in a fun turn. Jamie Bell (so sad about his break-up with his talented wife Evan Rachel Wood) does his best with an underwritten role. South Korean actor Kang-ho Song scores as the drug-addled mind-bender Namgoong Minsoo. Effective ending brings the story around to a light at the end of a long tunnel. 4 cats”
Chris says: “Adapted from a French graphic novel, SNOWPIERCER imagines a near future where an experiment to end global warming backfires stupendously, sending Earth into a new ice age where the only survivors forever travel on a train continuously circling the globe, powered by a perpetual motion engine. The super-long vehicle is divided into classes, with the wealthy ticket holders basking in a insulated multi-car utopia up front, and the poor have-nots huddled in the dank rear, subject to the militaristic regime led by Wilford, the train’s unseen creator and controller. After 17 years of living in squalor, Curtis (Chris Evans) leads the rebellion against the regime as he and his cohorts attempt to make their way through the numerous guarded gates and cars that separate the train’s tail from the engine room where Wilford reigns.
“Although the film sounds little different from your average summer action/sci-fi popcorn flick, it’s considerably more than that, thanks to its director, Bong Joon-ho. A South Korean making his first primarily English language effort, it’s tempting to say he goes where numerous fellow Asian auteurs have gone before (and failed) and still makes a terrific film anyway. And what a great cast he’s assembled! Evans is good as the hero/everyman (he’s rarely seemed less of a douche); his cohorts include Edgar (a wiry Jamie Bell), Tanya (another typically strong performance from Octavia Spencer) and Gilliam (ancient-yet-still-kicking John Hurt), his nearly limbless mentor. Bong also enlists two of his actors from his 2006 film THE HOST to play safecracker Namgoong (Song Kang-ho) and his daughter Yona (Go Ah-sung), whom the rebels similarly enlist in their quest. Ed Harris plays Wilford as a rational and droll yet heartless despot. Still, no one makes quite the impression Tilda Swinton does as Mason, Wilford’s henchman (well, the part was written for a man). Decked out in a frumpy wig, false teeth, unflattering coke bottle-lenses and a Scottish accent far goofier than her own, Swinton’s only onscreen for about twenty minutes total, and you can’t take your eyes off her—she’s fascinatingly, charismatically grotesque.
“As he did with THE HOST, Bong’s crafted an entertainment that works on multiple levels. Yes, SNOWPIERCER is every bit the visually astonishing, CGI-assisted, heart-pounding, violent, action-packed thriller a genre fan could want, but it’s just as much a provocative character study steeped in allegory with a faint, absurd, at times gallows humor always skirting around its edges. Every scene and action taken seems assured and the pacing never loses momentum. The production design is as visionary as you’d hope for, particularly in the second half as the rebels make their way up the train, worlds upon worlds opening up within each new car. And the leap-of-faith ending is a fully realized spectacle, both on a technical and an emotional level. Not merely a successful move into English language cinema for its director, SNOWPIERCER is also of a piece with his three previous Korean works (I have yet to see his first feature, BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE). At this moment, it doesn’t feel hyperbolic to say he’s one of our greatest living filmmakers. 5 cats”