Never Seen It, #156 of 200: Snowpiercer

You ever been to the blog section? Do you have any idea what went on back there? When we boarded? When we were watching 200 movies I'd never seen before? It was chaos. Yeah, we didn't freeze to death, but we didn't have time to be thankful.

Snowpiercer

2013

Bong Joon-ho

We welcome back to the blog Fisher and Sunny to discuss this week's film, Snowpiercer. You've seen Fisher in Never Seen It on multiple occasions and on the erstwhile This Is the Movies column. You've seen Sunny in Never Seen It for Children of Men and Pan's Labyrinth and basically every other corner of this godforsaken blog. Now see them together, as the three of us ask and answer questions about this very good movie. No one read anyone else's answers before answering themselves.

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1) Thoughts on the set design, visual effects, and soundtrack of this movie; did any of it particularly stand out or catch your attention? I get a strong sense of place, setting, and momentum in many scenes and am curious if others perceive the same, and why?

FISHER: Shortly after my second viewing, I confessed to a friend that I might have to put this in my Top Ten. Maybe it's not there today, but it's gotta be close.

My biggest reaction was probably how impressed I was to spend time in such varied locations while still being one train. And the technical merits you mentioned all played a huge part. So many full, wildly varied sets. VFX were satisfactory, but the amount of practicality was a joy.

If I were to convince anyone to watch this movie, I'd show the scene in which the axe fight is introduced: from the door opening to Tilda's creepy face before they enter the tunnel. It's one of the most captivating confluences of score and cinematography I've witnessed in film.

JOE: A scene that sticks with me is the reveal that the protein bars are made from bugs. The reveal is gruesome (and also sort of funny), but what elevates it is that the camera lingers on the image of the bugs for so fucking long. It felt like an eternity of watching cockroaches getting churned in a machine, even though it was probably only five seconds... but that's four seconds too long! Little decisions like that make the film the batshit genius that it is.

In terms of place/setting, I think the biggest thing to consider is the fact that it takes place on a train, which creates linear motion. A story doesn't have to be chronological (even though this one mostly is), but it can only move backward and forward. Crucially, in this film, due to its setting, the characters themselves can also only move backward or forward, like physically. Made the plot seem sharper to me, in this way.


2) Of all the "careers" you witnessed on that train, which would you want?

SUNNY: I tried googling to confirm my memory of all the train cars shown in the movie, but there's so much garbage about the newer Snowpiercer show (which has a much larger train, considering the two seasons) that it's impossible to get good data.

So, of what I remember, I'd love to be the single sushi chef in the middle. More likely I'd be drafted into the weird axe-and-leather-mask kill squad (what were they supposed to be anyway? Fishmongers/butchers? Wilford's militia?).

One question I thought about submitting is: what train car type / job type would you have put if you were the Snowpiercer designer that you didn't see in the movie? For me, an extra long car full of the world's best Bitcoin miners would be going 24/7. These BTC would be converted into non-fungible tokens of Stoned Wilford's which would be distributed at the rave car. This is how we re-heat the world.

JOE: Seems like the sushi chef is probably the one you want. No one, and I mean no one, is going to be fucking with that guy. Who's going to deny themselves fresh sushi? Not a single person from either end of the train.

It's interesting that I jumped to the conclusion that "safest job" would be the most preferable though, right? Maybe that speaks to why this film got to me so much—made me feel unsafe and unsettled. I actually sat down to watch it on the night of Fourth of July, and halfway through, I had to sit outside for a couple minutes because my dad was picking something up. While I was out there, all the fireworks were blasting from every direction (comes with the territory on these types of holidays in the city), and damn, I felt for a moment what it would be like to have PTSD. I am not comparing how I felt to PTSD, I'm just saying that how I felt made me realize what being diagnosed with that must feel like. It was deeply unsettling. I'm with Curtis—I want to be a good person, but I don't think I could ever cut off my own arm.

3) What other Bong Joon-ho movies have you seen? Parasite probably? Other South Korean movies? Is there anything distinct about Bong's style that elevates this sci-fi action movie into something more?

JOE: Just Parasite for me. I'm a normie. I would love to say that I would've watched Parasite if it wasn't nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, but maybe not. And I probably wouldn't even be here if a good pal hadn't talked about Snowpiercer when discussing some of his favorite movies by South Korean directors. At a certain point, I would love to check out his previous films like The Host and Mother. In a perfect world, I'm watching films more than once a week. Maybe when the kids get older.

Having only seen those two films, though, I may not be qualified to speak toward his overall style. Based on limited exposure, I'll say that both of these films felt "surreal." Like, they weren't afraid to be weird or even funny. I'm thinking about the big battle scene with the masked guards, and the axes coated in fish blood. Bizarre in how visceral that image is, and bizarre in how it's never explained. And then the main character slips on the fish! Which seemed so tonally off, to the point that it almost seemed brave to make that sort of filmmaking decision.

I read that this scene, among other scenes, were almost removed at the behest of shitheel Harvey Weinstein, but that Bong Joon-ho defended his movie, and won. I'm glad this is the movie that he wanted us to see, since it was so unique and so memorable. A part of me even wants to speculate whether Parasite's Oscar win was designed to make up for the fact that Weinstein fucked with Joon-ho so badly, even though I know such speculate would diminish Parasite, which is a great movie in its own right. I liked Snowpiercer a lot more though.

FISHER: Barking Dogs Never Bite, Memories of Murder, The Host, Mother, Okja, and Parasite. I'm a big Bong boi. And I highly, highly, highly recommend Mother. Especially if you like Parasite.

He's the perfect director for this because he's a cynical nerd and a master craftsman at blending genre. He's a lover of David Fincher and John Carpenter, two of Hollywood's greatest cynics. His humor is dark and clever as hell. He chases big themes and creates fun, funny scenes along the way. He hires a great cast and crew, he co-writes great scripts, and executes his job in a great way. He's great.


4) What do we make of the existence of the TV show? I'm asking rhetorically, since I will never fucking watch it, but I am curious as to your general thoughts. A deserved extra paycheck for Bong Joon-ho? Maybe. Even if that means you get to see the guy who does the voice of Sebastian in the shitty live-action Little Mermaid solve MURDERS on the train. Wow. I mean, I get it, it's a compelling world that this movie built, why wouldn't you wanna spend more time there with other characters, whatever. But what the fuck? That's my question. What the fuck.

SUNNY: What the fuck indeed.

I haven't seen it, I haven't read into it (other than it getting in my way of researching this movie), I didn't even know it existed until recently. This thing was on the TNT network? Seriously?

If some ca$h comes back to Bong and co., then that's something. It seems kind of silly that the show exists. From my light redditing, it sounds like Season 1 was a murder mystery that could have taken place anywhere, such as on a train to the Orient, a ship on the Nile, a haunted house in Venice, etc. So why the Snowpiercer? Feels like a cheap way to grab eyes, with seven years since the movie being the right nostalgia frame. But, I guess, these networks have to make something, and at least this universe is more compelling than modern day setting or medieval times setting or whatever. My main gripes are probably with streaming and prestige TV generally, and the fear of producers and financiers on taking risks with more original works, and I'll leave it there before I sound too Wilfordy myself.

FISHER: I don't even know what the fuck. I was seriously puzzled when I saw that it was being adapted. I mean, I hope Bong gets paid off it. And it's got great people on it. There's a slim chance I'd check it out. But yeah, I don't understand the decision. But my best to all involved.

5) Is Ed Harris right? Does the human condition DEMAND such inequality? And could democracy have worked on the train?

JOE: This is probably the big question, right? The unanswered question that serves as the "engine" to the entire plot. There is a right answer and a wrong answer, but there is also a necessary answer, due to adjacent ethical questions that supersede any logical concerns. Chris Evans, five years after this film, played some guy in some popular film (can't think of the name right now) in which the villain decided to kill half of the world's population. Which solved a lot of problems, sure! Just like it does on the train! But c'mon. You can't justify killing. You just can't. That's why the purple bald guy and the Truman Show engine conductor are the villains of their respective movies.

There was the line about inequality, but the response by Curtis at one point was something like "That's what the people with everything always say to the people who have nothing!" And that's the truth right there. Do we need inequality? Of course not. It's going to happen naturally, of course, but it's our responsibility as human beings to look out for our neighbor and make sure that we can make that gap as small as possible. The true evil people in both film worlds and in the real world are those who gleefully make the gap wider for their own benefit.

Could democracy work on the train? Sure, at least to the extent that democracy works in our country now. Which is: kind of, mostly, probably! But it feels like it would be cyclical—the rear passengers would take the spoils of the front passengers, share it as they see fit, and over time, inequality would rear its head again, more revolution, etc. History repeats itself.

The fact that these questions are presented in such a visceral, creative way is what makes Snowpiercer so successful. The answers to the questions don't matter, only that they exist in a train thriller staring Captain America (I finally remembered!).

SUNNY: I've said it before and I'll say it again: Democracy simply doesn’t work.

Much like the type of thinking Harris' character is standing in for, he's half right yet fully confident, which is the worst. The flashbacks of him being a train dork as a kid and then being able to enact it in the near dystopian future feels like Howard Roark meets Howard Hughes ("Now unveiling the Caboose Goose"), and makes the point that he is an overanalytical nerd with a great model who has come to believe the model is a better representation than the reality.

I think he's right that "in a closed system" certain elements need to be in balance or the system will not be able to continue. We might just call this an "ecosystem" or "civilization," depending on your perspective. Where the logic breaks down is jumping from the precedent that a certain amount of order, balance, etc. then requires a certain amount (and usually a large amount) of inequality. Wilford makes that logical jump because he believes in inequality in the economic system as a matter of faith, not a matter of necessity. Only after this assumption does he need to devise an (ingenious or idiotic) plan to use back-car dissent to ferment violent revolution as the principal agent of population control, using a direct connection with a leader in the caboose to orchestrate. I guess it worked a few times in the story of the movie, but how long did it hold before some persons preferred to burn the whole thing down, seventeen years?

I joke about Democracy often, but I do think small-d democracy could absolutely work on the train. The story Curtis tells about the back car and Gilliam cutting off his arm (even if that event may have been "staged" by Gilliam and Wilford) is still one showing how a desperate people came together from complete anarchy to a functioning system, a train car with heart and found family, despite sustenance being little more than black protein bars of suspicious origin.

6) Okay, it's a gruesome, violent, dystopian thriller. But... what do you think was the FUNNIEST part of this film? The smash cut to the "And then everyone on earth died out" set the tone for me, and the jokes and gags kept coming from there.

FISHER: Tilda Swinton gets funnier with each viewing. I don't have Netflix so the dialogue isn't fresh, but the hand motion when they mention everyone in their "preordained place" always tickled me. That Professor Umbridge lookin' b-otch is pretty great, too.The (brothers/lovers?) enforcer duo... who sometimes seemed like they were maybe eight feet tall? Am I remembering correctly?

SUNNY: Agreed that this movie is funny and tongue-in-cheek, and that low wire hum of humor undercutting the extreme violence and depression helps make it more emotionally engaging. Otherwise, I think the movie would feel either way too dour or too finger-waggy (see: M Haneke).

I get a chuckle thinking back to Namgoong and his daughter robbing the rave and opiate dens of drugs and coats. The ludicrous unstoppability of the Steve-Bannon-looking henchman guy was at once infuriating and hilarious, especially when he gets up AGAIN towards the end. Introducing the masked murder gang with that slow fish gutting makes me laugh because even after N times watching this movie, I have no idea what they're doing in that car. Tilda Swinton's increasingly hammy performance is fun in seeing the same character evolve as captor and captive. The entire classroom scene with song, up to and including the teacher pulling out an SMG, is a delight.

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JOE'S GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: Some Like It Hot is an older movie. I think. About some people liking it hot.