Arts

Snowpiercer: A Film of Trains, Snow, and Revolution

Imagine a combination of Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox and Sandlot 2. Now picture this magical film taking place not on a baseball field or foxhole, but rather on a train. Now, try to conceive of this train speeding through a snowy, nightmarish dystopia in which scientists’ attempts to reverse atmospheric temperature rise backfired, resulting in snow, and lots of it. Now you are ready to learn about Snowpiercer.

Labelled “bizarrely relevant” by the New York Daily News, and lauded by critics as “we liked this movie,” Snowpiercer presents a social commentary on what we think about trains and winter in a global economy in the 21st century. Legendary director of the critically reviewed crime-mystery-drama Mother Bong Joon-ho returns to present his views on the most pressing issues of our time: Income inequality, climate change, and Chris Evans holding an ax.

The movie opens with an explanation of why so many people are on a train in a world of snow. This phase of exposition is as informative as it is blatant. There are two distinct groups of people on this train. At the front of the train is the privileged class, which has all of the food and warmth and probably owns the train. At the back of the train, the regular and poor folk reside, hungrily sitting with their backs against the walls. They do not have access to the best resources on the train, and they are punished for stealing from others. How are they punished? For example, at one point there was a man who stole some food. The elites force his arm through a hole in the side of the train. As the train pierces the snow and goes “WHOOSH,” the snow freezes his arm until it turns blue. Then they take his blue arm and smash it with a hammer, so he can’t steal things anymore.

The deeply oppressed train proletariat has all but given hope, but then Chris Evans, played by the incomparable Chris Evans, comes along with a vision for a train revolution. He organizes and unites the train paupers to take back the train for themselves, and to get their fair share of food and warmth, before they arrive at their destination. Where is the train going? Is it heading to return the Earth’s climate to its pre-perpetual-winter state? Is it traveling forever, harnessing the power of the cold as fuel? Is it going to Newark, DE? Regardless, they want a revolution, and it will be violent. They have weapons that they steal from guards. They work together and enter a train car with masked men wielding axes. They fight and swing their axes into each other and eventually control the train car. Train car by train car by train and by car, they make their way to the front of the train. They find the train leader and make him put his arms outside of the train until they get blue and then smash them, at which point Chris Evans turns to his friends and says “we have made his arms blue and smashed them. We have won.” There is great celebration on the train car, as well as mourning for those swung with axes.

Snowpiercer teaches us everything that is possible when people come together and unite behind the common goal of taking over a train. It is clear from just the first half of this movie that Bong Joon-ho has done it again, combining suspense, comedy, drama, and dialogue into a presumably full-length film that critically-acclaimed critics described as “I watched roughly the first half of this movie a couple years ago and then fell asleep.” Snowpiercer was available for viewing on Netflix at the end of 2014, and might be there still.