Director Bong Joon-Ho’s English-language film debut, “Snowpiercer,” may not have an original premise, but one would hardly notice. Avoiding cliche for the most part, the post-apocalyptic survival plot focuses more on the resulting society oblivious to the effects of its oligarchical tendencies.
Coupled with subtle, detail-oriented cinematic techniques true to its South Korean blockbuster origins, the film successfully executes a story of a people whose economic percentiles are allegorical of our own.
Set in 2031, the world of “Snowpiercer” has become an icy wasteland, thanks to a failed experiment in reversing global warming. Now, all of humanity is crammed on a train that has developed its own unique dystopian ecosystem, with citizens at the mercy of both the frozen tundra they continually circle and the classist system embodied by the train’s individual compartments.
Menacing Effie-Trinket-like overseer Minister Mason (Tilda Swinton) administers senseless torture onto citizens in the “tail” or slum-like compartment of the train for the sake of population control and resource allocation. The brutality to which the tail is subjected, along with the worship of those giving orders from the front, convinces brooding and reluctant rebel Curtis Everett (Chris Evans) to start a revolution. As he makes his way to the front of the train to change the trajectory of humanity itself, Everett, seasoned mentor Gilliam (John Hurt), drug-addled engineer Namjoong (Kang Song Ho) and his clairvoyant daughter Yona (Go Ah Sung) come out of the Plato’s Cave that is their compartment. What they find renders the film less about a dystopian uprising and more about the tunnel vision that classism creates.
The group balks at everything the front yields, from the luxury its citizens enjoy to their oblivion to the borders of the makeshift society. The number of societal classes is never distinct — is one frontal compartment enjoying more privilege than the other? — but the closer the rebels get to the front, the more clear it is that each of those eating sushi, participating in an eternal dance party or relaxing in saunas all employ the same elements to “maintain” order: ignorance at best, naive appearances at worst.
While it isn’t immune to some signature South Korean gory action, “Snowpiercer” primarily uses slow-moving yet sinister shots with symbolism to gradually reveal a world as figuratively brutal inside as it physically is outside. In the end, the dialogue is what makes an audience used to the Hollywood diet of post-apocalyptic movies think harder than it wants to, while the ending is the most enduringly pessimistic part: Bong must believe that to break free from the classist societal structure, one needs a complete clean slate. And we’re forced to acknowledge, as a public dealing with a similar dilemma in the real world, that society would be hard-pressed to find a better solution.
_MOVE gives “Snowpiercer” 5 out of 5 stars._
