Saturday, July 5, 2014

SNOWPIERCER, a new film by South Korean filmmaker Joon Ho Bong.



SNOWPIERCER, directed by Joon Ho Bong, starring Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer , Ed Harris, Tilda Swinton, and John Hurt.
John Hurt as Gilliam, Chris Evans as Curtis and Jamie Bell as Edgar in SNOWPIERCER
 
SNOWPIERCER, directed by South Korean filmmaker Joon Ho Bong (The Host,  Mother), in his first English language film,  is truly an original, inventive, futuristic work which transcends all previous apocalyptic films.  He gives us a devastating concept of what may happen not too far in the future.   It appears that world government leaders, corporate heads, and the clueless 1%  had refused  to act to stop toxic emissions and a “quick fix”  radically affected the climate, causing the entire Earth, its oceans, and all waterways  to freeze.  Every living thing has died except for a hundred or so humans who were passengers on a high-speed, perpetual motion train. 

The film opens to reveal that the train has been endlessly circling the frozen globe for seventeen years.   Third class passengers-  families, including children born on the train who know no other life- have been relegated to the  last few  cars.   They live in squalor, like concentration camp prisoners, and ravenously gobble mass produced, slimy black “protein bars;" their clothes now shapeless, colorless rags.  They are kept in check by fascist-like, heavily armed guards lest they try to make their way to first class.  The head of the guards is Mason –Tilda Swinton- at her merciless best.  She is saved by being an unintentional comic figure.  She lectures the lower classes on “the eternal order” in which the privileged hold sway over “ungrateful scum.”  She looks like someone’s worst idea of a Dean of Girl’s in an all-girl boarding school, with her owlish glasses, unbecoming false teeth, and straight brown hair clipped back with bobby pins.  She barks out orders in a saliva-laced, strident voice,  wearing the white, militaristic outfit of an overweight high-school marching band tuba player. 

Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, and Octavia Spencer


Trouble begins when Mason and one of her plus-size female flunkies visits the third class cars, wearing a scarf over their face to ward off the smell.  They’ve come to measure and recruit a young child, Tanya’s boy (the reason is revealed later).  Tanya is played by Octavia Spencer in another strong, no-holds-barred role.  John Hurt plays Gilliam, the wise-old sage to whom they seek for advice.  Hurt’s buddy is Curtis, a young, healthy, handsome man of the Clive Owen type, played by Chris Evans of superhero fame (Captain America, etc).  As Robin is to Batman, so Jamie Bell’s Edgar is to Curtis.  Gilliam is trusted to intervene for them with Wilford (Ed Harris, in a role not unlike the God-like figure he played in The Truman Show).   Those in first class live, eat, play, and sleep under his  protection .  This is Wilford’s train.  Enamored by railways as a toddler, he went on to build and own them, and construct an empire of trains, eventually inventing the perpetual motion engine that keeps his Snowpiercer running.

The landscape scenes are stunning- a relief to the claustrophobic interiors.  We watch as the ice encrusted train  weaves its way through mountains, over icicle-draped bridges spanning frozen rivers and lakes, past awesome frozen cities, their landmark buildings barely discernible beneath icy carapaces.  The passengers’ windows are iced shut so they are denied the gorgeous vision of what is just inches away.  When someone complains, the punishment is a frozen body part which guards sledgehammer into pieces while the victim is left to writhe in agony.  When such an incident occurred on top of the kidnapping of Tanya’s boy, they’ve had enough.  They must get to the front of the train.  Gilliam selects an unwitting Curtis as leader. 
   
They make their way from car to car, fighting the guards with axes and makeshift weapons and gain the upper hand when Curtis realizes that there are no bullets in their guns because bullets were outlawed decades ago (would that this were so today).  To access Wilford’s quarters, Curtis must get the secret code from the Inuit, Namgoong Minsoo (Korean actor Kang Ho Song) , who is traveling with his  daughter, Yona (Ah sung Ko).  He is stoned on something called Kona, which is compounded from chemical waste (The fact that he and Yona are Inuit and the makeup of the drug are vital elements to the film’s ultimate resolution) .  He will give Curtis the code as long as he is supplied with the drug. 
   
Curtis and Edgar’s task is to key in a  code to each door that separates the cars.  Once open, they have a few seconds before they close.  The  ensuing battles  are gory, violent and bloody.  The guards closest to the front of the trains do have bullets.  One pierces a window; a wounded Namgoong  lies there watching  a tiny snowflake drift in through the hole; his eyes light up and you wonder what he is thinking.   Curtis, Yona and the others pass from one car to the next through startling scenes of sunlight streaming through glass domes on lush gardens, greenhouses with fruit-bearing trees, vegetable patches, and domestic  animals; one car is a night-club with a rave going on as trendy first classers drink and dance to techno–rock.  There’s a sedate club car where patrons sit quietly drinking and reading.  They react in revulsion and horror  as the masses and guards hack and shoot their way through.

The film is full of surprises:  There’s a scene in a typical grade school class in one of the forward cars.  The pregnant teacher leads her students in a song about what happens when the engine breaks down.  They repeat the chorus in unison, singing: “We all freeze and die,” with appropriate arm-waving.  She then pulls a gun and starts shooting at Curtis and his followers.  Wilford’s hefty female employees look as though they haven’t progressed from the 1950s’ clean, scrubbed look and style.  

A bank vault-like door finally opens onto Wilford’s luxury car as he, dressed in a long silk robe, is sautéing a steak while Curtis looks on, hungrily.  Wilford babbles on with his evil, airy philosophy about his oligarchic goals and dreams, and reveals a startling clue about his relationship to Gilliam.  As David Denby stated in the July 7 & 14 issue of The New Yorker, comparing films like “Elysium” and “Hunger Games,” he says, “Snowpiercer  presents a portrait of oligarchical rule and underclass  discontent.  Fueled by disgust of the decadent rich and admiration of the outraged poor.”  He then asks, “Is revolution being hatched in commercial cinema?”

A version of this review can also be found in Socialst Action News.  Go to www.socialistaction.org


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