Snap Judgment: "Snowpiercer"

Hello chickadees!

This has been an immensely busy time and so many great things are happening!  My wedding is a scant two months away, and my internship is rapidly coming to a close.  AND.  I HAVE A JOB.  Which is really spectacular, in oh so many ways.

But time is of the essence!  So instead of going into more detail about these very positive life developments, I would like to break my altogether too long hiatus from writing about movies.  I therefore present to you: my second snap judgment!

Today I will discuss "Snowpiercer" (2013), which I saw in the beautiful, beloved city where Fiancé and I will get married, which we visited last weekend for wedding planning-y things.

Per my proposal in my first snap judgment, for the sake of actually completing a post every once in a while, I will limit myself to five bullet points.

Snap judgment:  Really cool!!  But also pretty flawed.

• Emotionally and aesthetically, this movie is in excellent company.

Caro and Jeunet's "City of Lost Children"

The aesthetic of "Snowpiercer" reminded me of the glorious, weird, dark, sweet work of genius French filmmaking duo Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, directors of wonderful films like "City of Lost Children" (1995) and "Delicatessen" (1991).

While this film wasn't so whimsical that it included a squeaking bedspring dance sequence, there was definitely a healthy dose of dark, bizarre humor to add some levity to what would otherwise be a crushingly bleak story of post-apocalyptic class warfare in the context of a doomed human race.

I'm always impressed and gratified by directors who don't shy away from zaniness, especially in otherwise incredibly depressing stories.  Imbuing those narratives with splashes of absurd humor offers space for an irrepressible human spirit to shine in the face of immense despair.  Especially in a world in which humans have not only destroyed the planet but have still found ways to horrifically mistreat each other, without that rebellious and defiant humor, this movie might be simply unbearable to watch.

Joon-Ho Bong's "Snowpiercer"

• It's a morality tale without being stupid about it.

Lately, I've been more preoccupied than usual about the incredibly obviously true scientific fact that we are murdering this planet and therefore ourselves via climate change.

I attribute this--bear with me--to my approaching wedding.

Sometimes, when people get married, one of the next things they do is have children.  I anticipate being one of those people.  Generally speaking, I'm really really excited and hopeful to be one of those people.

But what sense does it make to have children if I'm just going to deliver them onto a dying planet?  Especially if it's a planet that's dying because human beings are too stupid and mortality-denying and materialistic and small-minded to stop burning fossil fuels and contributing to horrible animal death and start recycling and building wind farms?

Taking myself out of this issue altogether, it appears increasingly, terrifyingly clear that immediate attention and change on a global level is demanded of humanity if we are to achieve anything meaningful in saving this planet.  And honestly, it might already be too late.  So when I saw the trailer for "Snowpiercer," I winced because minus the part where humans somehow manage to survive global subzero temperatures, the basic premise seems all too plausible and so desperately pressing.

That being said, I never felt like I was being beaten over the head with the imminence of human-caused catastrophic climate change.  This is a film that confronts this all-too-likely future with enough substance that the audience doesn't feel brow-beaten.

"Snowpiercer" therefore feels like a societally important film in that it takes civilization-ending climate change as an in-the-near-future given and makes us look at what horrors could befall us if/when we allow it to happen.  That's a narrative more people need to contemplate, and the fact that this is a generally well-told story will hopefully help facilitate that.

• But is there anything I hate more than crappy dialogue?

During our viewing of the movie, there was some totally unintended audience laughter at what were meant to be very serious moments, and it was because some of the dialogue was just bad.  I fucking hate that.  I HATE IT.

SAY BETTER THINGS.

Any time I feel like I could have fixed a script or written better words, something has seriously gone terribly wrong.  In what is clearly an expensive film with so, so many people working on it, you would think someone would have tweaked some of those terrible yet very important lines.

• Effort necessary to successfully suspend disbelief: significant.

So many questions threaten to bump any discerning viewer out of the story.  Honestly how does a train built now-ish have the technology to run infinitely?  How can it really run over snow-and-ice-covered tracks without any maintenance?  Not to mention why and how would we build train tracks to cross oceans?  Why isn't the train at least double-decker to maximize potential space?  Are you seriously telling me this train has a self-sustaining aquarium car and two, TWO cars devoted to spa care?  Why is there a train car filled with just hooded dudes with axes?  Where do all the rich people sleep and keep their stuff??

I don't understandddddddd

• And yet: it's so pretty!

The visuals are beautiful, striking, and trippy and feel like an acid-laced dream, and if you can suspend your disbelief it's wonderful.  I suggest you try.

The train feels like some mechanized metaphor for society (rich people at the front, poor at the back),

or for a human body (a caboose for bowels, a meat freezer car for a belly, a sauna for lungs),

or for the human mind (although it's mostly id with some superego and almost no ego to speak of),

or or or?

And then, no spoilers, but: the final image is the most striking of all.  It's so quieting, and so heartbreaking.

So with all that in mind I give it a 4, with a strong recommendation that, in spite of its evident imperfection, this film be seen.

{Heart}