When life as we know it comes to an end, it is not without irony that its replacement keeps its remnants of humanity alive by running repetitively around a ceaseless track. That’s the central conceit of Snowpiercer, the English-language debut from South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, and the long-awaited big-screen adaptation of the 1982 cult graphic novel Le Transperceneige. To stop a cycle of environmental destruction, an act of intervention casts the world into unforeseen perpetual cold, with remaining on a circling train the sole method of survival for the few fortunate enough to scramble onboard.
Round and round the titular engine goes, and its cargo along with it, though their relentless looping is complicated by the interior’s own linear society. The haves and the have-nots inhabit vastly dissimilar ends of their makeshift metallic home, the former in the luxurious confines of the front, the latter in the utilitarian squalor of the tail. Though the oppressed agitate for revolution, specifically reluctant leader Curtis (Chris Evans, Captain America: The Winter Soldier), their attempts are constantly thwarted by the class-enforcing condemnation of Minister Mason (Tilda Swinton, Only Lovers Left Alive). Secreted messages encourage their perseverance, sparking the release of security expert Namgoong Minsoo (Song Kang-ho, Thirst) to assist with the trek through the locomotive’s carriages towards its creator.
Dystopian formula and themes drip thick and fast in writer/director Joon-ho’s first film since 2009’s Mother, yet with an auteur’s imaginative eye, he shapes the familiar into an offering that both pays homage to and reshapes its many influences. Name a screen or page source of an unhappy future, and it likely bears recollection; however the weight of deliberation also sidles through his efforts, every element brimming with meaning. This is a feature that calls one of its proponents of change after a visionary of similar ilk, as seen in wise old-timer Gilliam, while simultaneously casting the character with an actor renowned for such material, in the form of John Hurt (1984, V is for Vendetta). This is a movie that finds joy in juxtaposition, whether in the use of Evans as the kind of hero far removed from the Marvel world, or in stitching together a tapestry of equally awe-inspiring science fiction, horror and action moments.
Indeed, in a film that remains single-minded in its rendering of desolation and its plundering of greed and manipulation as earned but overt reasons for much of its narrative developments, diversity is the key – in what actually unravels within the frame, and how. In its journey from one end of the train to another, it flirts with difference in style and story, whether glaring soberly at a display of punishment for insubordination, or pulsing with immediacy in a frenetic fight under the cover of darkness, or bursting into colour in a school room that most strongly and strangely embodies its skewering of propaganda, all three ranking among its most striking setpieces. Joon-ho and cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo (Love Exposure) demonstrate distinct aesthetic flourishes for each segment, albeit always with a sense of movement and in keeping with the presentation of a cohesive whole. Though a blockbuster in concept and content, the end result is the antithesis of the routine fare that too frequently makes its way to cinemas, valuing its thoughtful transformation and subversion to the point of jubilant absurdity.
Those who populate Snowpiercer also illustrate the feature’s preference for the multifaceted – an array of well-known names and faces comprising its cast, yes, but the line-up that includes Jamie Bell (Nymphomaniac), Octavia Spencer (Fruitvale Station), Ewen Bremner (Jack the Giant Slayer), Allison Pill (To Rome with Love) and Luke Pasqualino (TV’s Skins) far from the homogenous assemblage more commonly seen. The joy of seeing Kang-ho and Ko Ah-sung, alum of the filmmaker’s breakout hit The Host, as major players is matched by a script, as co-written with Kelly Masterson (Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead), that doesn’t dare equate its variety with tokenism. Again, the delicacy and disparity is in the details; again, the film shows change and chaos in a microcosm, as wrapped up in a world incapable of deviating from its self-imposed structure. The mantra of purpose and place has perhaps never been given a more pertinent cinematic vehicle; Snowpiercer is unashamedly big and bleak, and joyfully brutal and beautiful, finding its finesse in their entertaining intersection.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Snowpiercer
Director: Bong Joon-ho
South Korea / Czech Republic / USA / France, 2013, 126 mins
Release date: July 24
Distributor: Roadshow
Rated: MA
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