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| Tilda Swinton assigns the proles their station in Snowpiercer. |
«««1/2 Snowpiercer. Written by Joon Ho-Bong & Kelly
Masterson. Based on Le Transperceneige, by Jacques Lob & Jean-Marc Rochette. Directed by Joon Ho-Bong. At selected
theaters.
It’s not hard to see the appeal of the premise behind
the French graphic novel Le
Transperceneige (“Snowpiercer”) by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette. It features not one but two of our favorite
cultural themes: the end of the world, and the gulf between rich and poor (e.g.
The Hunger Games, Elysium, and a seemingly endless number
of other pop epics). In the French version, after the climate is wrecked by a
failed attempt to reverse global warming, the remnants of humanity survive
aboard a 1,000 car-long train that performs an endless loop of the continents.
Why a train, you ask? Well, the story is French, and as George Will recently
complained in a widely-read, widely derided op-ed in Newsweek, don’t those Eurosocialists love their trains?
The movie version turns out not to be
French, but the handiwork of Joon Ho-Bong, the visionary South Korean who gave
us the post-modern monster epic, The Host.
It also happens to be one of the craziest summer movies in recent memory—a
rat-bag of action, spectacle, and trenchant social commentary that somehow—like
Amtrak—manages to get somewhere.
Bong wisely trims the novel’s train of
1,000 cars to a few dozen, and the action to a rising of the steerage class
against their betters up front. For on
this polar express, your station in life is measured by your proximity to the
source of all sustenance—the Engine, which is perpetual and—not without
reason—seen as divinely powered. Insurgent leader Curtis (Captain America Chris Evans) is pure tail section, where people
survive in squalid, cramped quarters eating nothing but protein paste. (In
other words, like customers on Spirit Airlines.) The proles are kept at bay by
Tilda Swinton, who is wigged and dentured like the worst librarian in the world.
As she oppresses the masses, she dispenses choice bits of rail-derived
religious ideology, admonishing them to “keep their station.” Snowpiercer may be a rare summer movie
with a political edge, but the edge isn’t exactly keen. In fact, it’s more like
a bludgeon.
The movie is little more than a decent
actioner as Curtis’ rebels start their march toward the head of the train.
Where Bong really hits his stride is how he visualizes the contrast between
steerage and first class. The insurgents pass through increasingly opulent,
baroque surroundings (a car full of hot tubs; an aquarium car complete with
sushi bar) that look vaguely Kubrickian, the bastard spawn of Clockwork Orange and the last twenty
minutes of The Shining. At its best, the thing feels like freewheeling
satire where literally anything can happen.
Snowpiercer
doesn’t sustain this level of craziness. In the end, it devolves into the
kind of conspiratorial hand-waving of too many modern political thrillers,
where the idea of a genuine uprising against injustice just isn’t believable to
most viewers. After leading his people
from bondage, the modern Moses won’t be idolized—he’ll be subpoenaed.
Still, Bong deserves credit for at
least suggesting that evil can be not just a personal quality embodied in
villains, but an aspect of a system. In the middle of the summer stupid season,
that almost qualifies as genius.
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