Snowpiercer review
Jul. 23rd, 2014 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fannishlissSnowpiercer (2013)
Dir. Bong Joon-ho
currently at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Hopefully not too spoilery. I tried to be cautious.
First of all, let me debunk the train for you. I was a little hung up on the plot point of why build a train to save the world?? Wouldn't an ark be better?? But they didn't actually build the train to save the world. It was just that a train enthusiast built a train that would never stop running, that traveled all around the world to different places (not just on a circular track, but on a circuitous track that took exactly one year to complete), and the train was built to be a self-contained ecosystem so that it would never have to stop. It just so happened that the train was running when the Ice Nine event occurred and the world froze solid. And then one thousand hobos, including Steve Rogers, Billy Elliott, and the War Doctor, jumped onto the end of the train and crammed themselves into the caboose.
Fast forward 17 years, and you find that Steve (who in this movie is called Curtis Everett, but let's just call him Steve), is a very sad and very angry man, who is helping his Tailies plan a revolution. (Chimes with LOST can't be accidental. cough-Widmore!-cough) The War Doctor (John Hurt, aka Gilliam) is the Leader, but Steve is the trusted lieutenant. Steve has spent half his life on the train, and doesn't want to talk about it. BTW Chris Evans does an amazing job in this movie and I bought the reactions and emotional tortures of his character throughout.
The movie is very obviously a morality play about how the Haves justify their existence to the Have-nots, and how they take from Have-nots what little they Have. It's also very much about ecology and how every living creature must fit into a niche. For Steve, in particular, it's about his attempt as a human being to justify taking up space and using the resources at hand to survive. You never learn anything about Steve's origins, but it's clear that the horrors of being a Tailie made him into an ubermensch -- but also, that the War Doctor was grooming him somehow.
In Steve's words, "how can a man with two arms lead?" You don't realize what this means until the very end, but you do see the War Doctor, hobbling about on one leg with only one arm and you don't exactly know why, except that he obviously is respected not only for his wisdom, but also for some kind of valiant sacrifice.
Some things I loved about the movie were the visuals as they traveled up the train toward the Head. To me, the visuals were very French, which I assume is because of the graphic novel. Tilda Swinton pretty much reprises her role from Budapest Hotel. At one point she removes her front teeth for no apparent reason. There is a certain element of body horror in this movie -- skewering, limbs removed, etc. There is certainly the ugly grittiness of bodily survival, the horrible mandates of bodily existence. So many people die in this movie, not gonna lie.
At another point there is an army of men in black raincoats, with monocular eye goggles, wielding axes and the occasional sturgeon. Yes. Steve hacks his way through them like a boss. Plus he is full of back up plans, which is why the War Doctor has made him the Leader.
There are two main characters who are Korean. One (Song Kang-ho) is a security engineer with his own agenda. The other is his daughter Yona (Ko Ah-sung), who for some reason is clairvoyant. It is pretty cool when Steve just asks her point blank, "are you clairvoyant?" but she doesn't give a straight answer. Both these characters are awesome, and their agenda adds compelling twists to the fight that Steve takes to the front of the Train. There is also a wonderful woman of color named Tanya (Octavia Spencer) who fights a very good fight.
Some people might say this movie is long. It's actually 126 mins. I saw it on the big screen and I was gripping my seat and gasping for breath. The denouement is devastation for Steve, even though it is its own kind of victory.
This movie reminded me most of the classic LeGuin story, "the Ones who Walk Away from Omelas."
There is a surprise at the very end. I won't give it away, but I think it means two things: there is always hope, and we are not actually the apex of creation. We are not as alone as we believed. So I think it was a weird ending, but wonderful in its way.
Dir. Bong Joon-ho
currently at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Hopefully not too spoilery. I tried to be cautious.
First of all, let me debunk the train for you. I was a little hung up on the plot point of why build a train to save the world?? Wouldn't an ark be better?? But they didn't actually build the train to save the world. It was just that a train enthusiast built a train that would never stop running, that traveled all around the world to different places (not just on a circular track, but on a circuitous track that took exactly one year to complete), and the train was built to be a self-contained ecosystem so that it would never have to stop. It just so happened that the train was running when the Ice Nine event occurred and the world froze solid. And then one thousand hobos, including Steve Rogers, Billy Elliott, and the War Doctor, jumped onto the end of the train and crammed themselves into the caboose.
Fast forward 17 years, and you find that Steve (who in this movie is called Curtis Everett, but let's just call him Steve), is a very sad and very angry man, who is helping his Tailies plan a revolution. (Chimes with LOST can't be accidental. cough-Widmore!-cough) The War Doctor (John Hurt, aka Gilliam) is the Leader, but Steve is the trusted lieutenant. Steve has spent half his life on the train, and doesn't want to talk about it. BTW Chris Evans does an amazing job in this movie and I bought the reactions and emotional tortures of his character throughout.
The movie is very obviously a morality play about how the Haves justify their existence to the Have-nots, and how they take from Have-nots what little they Have. It's also very much about ecology and how every living creature must fit into a niche. For Steve, in particular, it's about his attempt as a human being to justify taking up space and using the resources at hand to survive. You never learn anything about Steve's origins, but it's clear that the horrors of being a Tailie made him into an ubermensch -- but also, that the War Doctor was grooming him somehow.
In Steve's words, "how can a man with two arms lead?" You don't realize what this means until the very end, but you do see the War Doctor, hobbling about on one leg with only one arm and you don't exactly know why, except that he obviously is respected not only for his wisdom, but also for some kind of valiant sacrifice.
Some things I loved about the movie were the visuals as they traveled up the train toward the Head. To me, the visuals were very French, which I assume is because of the graphic novel. Tilda Swinton pretty much reprises her role from Budapest Hotel. At one point she removes her front teeth for no apparent reason. There is a certain element of body horror in this movie -- skewering, limbs removed, etc. There is certainly the ugly grittiness of bodily survival, the horrible mandates of bodily existence. So many people die in this movie, not gonna lie.
At another point there is an army of men in black raincoats, with monocular eye goggles, wielding axes and the occasional sturgeon. Yes. Steve hacks his way through them like a boss. Plus he is full of back up plans, which is why the War Doctor has made him the Leader.
There are two main characters who are Korean. One (Song Kang-ho) is a security engineer with his own agenda. The other is his daughter Yona (Ko Ah-sung), who for some reason is clairvoyant. It is pretty cool when Steve just asks her point blank, "are you clairvoyant?" but she doesn't give a straight answer. Both these characters are awesome, and their agenda adds compelling twists to the fight that Steve takes to the front of the Train. There is also a wonderful woman of color named Tanya (Octavia Spencer) who fights a very good fight.
Some people might say this movie is long. It's actually 126 mins. I saw it on the big screen and I was gripping my seat and gasping for breath. The denouement is devastation for Steve, even though it is its own kind of victory.
This movie reminded me most of the classic LeGuin story, "the Ones who Walk Away from Omelas."
There is a surprise at the very end. I won't give it away, but I think it means two things: there is always hope, and we are not actually the apex of creation. We are not as alone as we believed. So I think it was a weird ending, but wonderful in its way.
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no subject
Date: 2014-07-24 05:05 am (UTC)i really really loved all the reveals at the end. there was just one right after the other, boom-boom-boom. and every single one was just HOLY FUCKING SHIT DID THAT REALLY JUST HAPPEN. i spent a lot of the last half with my hands over my mouth. (and occasionally over my eyes. i mean, that fight in the train car in the dark, that was fucking brutal.) i was totally unspoiled which is really the only way to see the movie, altho i would've liked to have had an inkling of just how violent it was.
i thought the ending was kind of ambivalent, tho. i mean, on one hand, yes, there's some hope. but at the same time, there's no practical future. it was a very appropriate? i guess that's the word? ending. it's not necessarily a hopeful movie. but it's a very interesting movie, and i think it's trying to say some interesting things. and it just looked fantastic.
(i was however totally thrown by the fact that chris evans sounded like captain america but really, really wasn't. he did an amazing job, but i so totally imprinted on him as steve rogers that that's who i always expect him to be.)
no subject
Date: 2014-07-24 02:13 pm (UTC)"chris evans sounded like captain america but really, really wasn't" -- I think the only other thing I've seen him in was Cellular, which I don't even remember in the slightest. :P that was a hundred million years ago i think. :P But, May I ramble about Actors and the Acting Thing for a minute???
Inside Actors there is this Thing. They usually call it their "Energy." (My husband is a stage actor, we've been trying to figure this out for half our lives, it's a mystery). In Chris, he definitely brings that inner Energy to his role as Steve Rogers, and in this film, to "Curtis Everett." In a lot of ways, Curtis is a blank slate. He's been pared down to a few essential impulses -- his guilt-fueled rage and his determination to flip the system. Okay, so, for me, Chris brings the same Energy playing Curtis's determination, his pain and anger, as when he plays Steve. This role, for me, is Dark!Steve, really really Dark -- but still essentially, at his core, Steve, or rather, that (ahem) avenging Energy that Chris finds in himself and fuels these portrayals with. This is a man who's done HORRRIBLE things to survive, and he can never forgive himself, but he's just living on in the dream of being able to somehow flip the system for his people. Essentially, a very Steve role. you know, in Steve/Bucky stories, Bucky sometimes gets this thing in his head about how if STEVE had fallen and had his arm replaced and been brainwashed and frozen STEVE would never have become the Winter Soldier. but yes, yes he would have. And this crazy train movie is kind of that AU. For me anyway. And sadly, no Bucky, unless you count Billy Elliott in that role, which makes it all a BILLION times worse. ;_; It will be a real shame if Chris gives up acting. He is really amazing in a lead role... I really have grown to love him as Steve, and now this role kind of clinched it for me in my impression of him as a really good actor.
I also prefer his natural complexion, because I think he looks really weird as a blond, and it's not like I love Beards or anything, but it must be a living hell for him to go as a clean shaven blond, poor guy. :P
that ending - it just means, I think, that there IS life under the snow. There could be SO MUCH the people on the train didn't know. i saw a snark tho where someone said it made them want a coke and I have to admit, it kind of did me too. lolz
I don't have an appropriate icon right now because I haven't paid LJ in a while. :P
OH and YES the staggering reveals!!! that's why I tried to write a very careful review. So much happens, and so much is unveiled, and it's all so freaking UNFAIR and Steve, um, "Curtis" just keeps fighting and trying to make good... wow, what a movie.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-24 09:13 pm (UTC)and funny you should mention only lovers left alive, because i'm leaving work early tonight to go see it, on the ONE NIGHT it's playing in harvard square. (it came to greater boston already, but was here for such a short period of time that i missed it.)
to be fair to chris evans, who really is a good actor, i saw snowpiercer on july 5 and had spent a chunk of july 4 watching catfa on tv, so his steve voice was fresh in my head. if i'd just seen, say, the losers - which i recommend, if you're in the market for chris evans movies - i would've had a much easier time getting into him as curtis. his acting was never the issue, it was totally me.
i didn't see curtis as a kind of au dark!steve, but i don't think you're wrong. i mean, in catfa, bucky (and the other howling commandos, i guess) do the dark, sneaky, morally and ethically questionable shit so steve can be the bright pure light of america, so he can continue to be the propaganda machine's golden boy and never have to get his hands dirty. which no doubt leaves a mark on him anyway, because guilt, and because he WANTS to fight and do all that stuff, and other men died so he didn't have to. so i guess if you strip that out, and put him down there where he HAS to do all these horrific things, you might get curtis. and curtis does have the same almost suicidal determination to push through and do the right thing, and he lets his anger fuel him (altho i admit i never saw steve as permanently angry as apparently a lot of other people seem to see him), and it's not that curtis isn't steve-like in some ways - or that chris doesn't tap into the same energy to play him - it's just that he's not captain america.
(but the thought of steve letting the same thing happen to edgar breaks my heart. and yeah, if steve had fallen off the train and hydra had found him rather than bucky, they still would've turned him into the winter soldier. they might have had a harder time - i've read some commentary that suggested bucky was already half screwed up from a. zola's experiments, and b. the stuff he did as a howling commando, whereas steve was so SURE of his rightness - but they still would've gotten their cyborg assassin.)
i've always had a thing for blonds but i'm right there with you on chris' dark hair. it really does look better on him. and the facial hair, that can stay too.
(it is so hard to comment on this movie and not give anything major away! but man, i got to the end and just wanted to hug curtis so badly. one of my friends commented on twitter, after she'd seen it, that basically he should have all the hugs. and yes, yes he should.)
no subject
Date: 2014-07-25 05:13 pm (UTC)My husband and I had a long discussion about how Chris is cast as a Hero, and when you are a Hero, your role and the things you can do in it are somewhat limited. I guess I should see Losers! and maybe Push? I'd love to see this movie he directed with him and Alice Eve, called "Before We Go" but who knows if it will ever get distribution GRRRRR. It is scheduled to be shown at the Toronto film festival in September..... Well, we eventually got to see Ten Inch Hero, you know, so I guess there is some hope.
Harvey Weinstein should go jump in a lake. :P
no subject
Date: 2014-07-25 05:51 pm (UTC)i think it's only with captain america that chris has been (type?)cast as the hero. i mean, his previous movies are, uh, well, there's some dumb comedies in there and the ff4 movies and i wouldn't call him a hero in either the losers or push, altho he's a protagonist and kind of a good guy and we're supposed to root for his success. i think he's really pushing against the mold, tho, in non-mcu stuff that he does. and i don't blame him, because he's got the range.
harvey weinstein, ugh. i think snowpiercer got good critical press, tho, and i'd bet it played to full (or almost full) houses, so bong joon-ho is being totally vindicated.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-25 07:37 pm (UTC)