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  • Film & TV Moderators: ghostfreak

Film Snowpiercer

tentatively, i would rate this as possibly the best movie i have seen.

to me it seemed like an allegorical tale of the spiritual path, anyway, i am just astounded, everything about it was perfect, a true masterpiece.
 
Unfortunately, I didn't really enjoy this movie.

It started off with a ridiculous and yet intriguing premise - that's no bad thing, generally I'm happy to try to hang my disbelief by the neck for a few hours and I love anything post apocalyptic, but by about half way I had started to lose interest and let the movie carry on playing while I started looking at reviews on my tablet to see if I was the only one who hadn't drank the Chrono-flavoured kool aid. Am probably in a minority but I found some very negative reviews out there, which reassured me I hadn't gone crazy.

I guess whatever else was happening, I started off caring a bit about the characters, and by about an hour in I didn't give a crap anymore, I simply didn't care what happened, who died or didn't, and I guess for me being invested in the characters is what makes me have any interest in how the actual story resolves itself, and after the the opening scenes the film did nothing to make me care about the characters so I lost interest in what was happening.

The madwoman with the glasses made me laugh a few times though! A film populated with more characters like her would have been awesome!

I am really glad others here enjoyed it though and can see why people would, and I do understand that it was trying to do, it just didn't do it for me! Ah well, at least I can free up some hard drive space!
 
ForEverAfter said:
Spoilers? (Wrap your text in nsfw tags.)

NSFW:
Snowpiercer doesn't have the typical happy ending that the underdog template usually results in. Hence, my reference to Gilliam's Brazil. It certainly isn't a crowd-pleasing ending. The Weinstein's attempted to change it for American audiences. (Again, see: Gilliam's Brazil.) I don't see how a happy ending would have been possible, regardless of which direction they chose. The film is telling us that the "machine" that maintains our lifestyle/ wellbeing can only function by maintaining an arguably unjustifiable balance of suffering and luxury. ie. We can only live our extremely fortunate/ excessive lifestyles, if people are dying on the other side of the world.

The men who guided passenger planes into the world trade centre and the pentagon in 2001 are from "the tail end of the plane". (Did you ask yourself what position you have on the train?) Snowpiercer very cleverly humanizes and articulates the motivations of contemporary terrorists and other historical insurgents. It also, briefly, covers the cyclical nature of war and the consequently shifting "power balance" as underdogs become alphas, and vice-versa.

I don't agree with the Chrono addict's decision to destroy the train, but I understand it from his perspective. It is a act of self-destruction, disguised as desperate survivalism.

Wilford is the most (perhaps only) relatively enlightened member of the train. He has such a comprehensive understanding of the horrific nature of the world, that he comes across as practically inhuman. Because, symbolically, he isn't human. He is God. (Praise Wilford!) He understands the balance that most of the fortunate people (in the real world) struggle to process with their conscience. Humanitarians, for example, aren't enlightened. They're lying to themselves, so they can sleep at night.

Realistically, we are not going to save everybody. The entire world cannot consist of first-world countries. If resources were distributed evenly, it is more likely that the world would consist entirely of third world countries. Snowpiercer illustrates this perfectly, by contextualizing the entire surviving world in a horrific, post-apocalyptic machine that requires suffering for it's basic operation.

I don't come from the tail end of the plane and, while I'm not oblivious to the suffering of those who do, I have come to accept it for what it is. I do not feel like I owe them anything any more than I feel like I owe species bordering on extinction. (The idea of balance exists outside the "machine", obviously. Hence, the shot of the polar bear right at the end of the film.) Snowpiercer helped me - and it may well not have been the film-makers intention to do so - justify/understand the indifference I have towards those less fortunate than me.

A lot of (relatively) wealthy Western people can only continue to function by repressing their genuine reactions to the starving masses. It's very difficult to justify buying an expensive car, knowing what we do. What people should do, according to the moral code that we supposedly live by, is buy an inexpensive car and donate as much money as possible to charity. (Or, even, take the bus.) But, we don't do this and we feel guilt for it: it's always there, on some deeply repressed sub-conscious level. This is why the schoolchildren and the ravers, etc., were utterly oblivious to the living conditions of the passengers in the tail end and the justifiable motivations for recurrent insurgencies.

Most people I speak to dehumanize terrorists. When it comes to a war that threatens our personal safety, we take sides very quickly. We're willing to kill. We're willing to do whatever it takes to survive. This is Darwinism, within a species. Survival of the fittest. It is the basic code of the universe, and it cannot be changed. Humanitarian acts alleviate the conscience of those (guilty, unenlightened) men and women committing them. Saving a dozen people allows them to sleep at night. It allows us all to sleep at night. It is part of the balance. It helps us maintain our oblivion, by believing - beyond all available evidence - that everything will be okay. But, it does nothing to alter the unchangeable laws of nature. Everything will not be okay. People must suffer for me to able to afford to live a luxurious life.

The path towards enlightenment (and I'm steering away from the film, here) begins with oblivion/ ignorance. The second stage is pain and madness. And the third is acceptance. As far as the structure of Snowpiercer goes, this re-arranges the train a little bit. (Hence, my departure from the film.) My point is, that I chose to navigate this path a long time ago. My politics do not reflect the politics of the film. People often think I'm a monster, when they hear what I have to say about the starving masses. I sound a little like Wilford did, eating his steak dinner. Until fairly recently, I've been torn between Wilford and the fortunate. I have maintained somewhat "inhuman" politics, and hated myself for doing so.

I guess one of the reasons this film had such a profound effect on me, is because it was perfectly in tune with my position on the path. For me, it could not have been timelier. Again, I'm not sure if the message I took from the film is the one that the film-maker wanted me to. But, my interpretation is valid and art - after all - is open to interpretation.
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Hello. I've registered to this forum just to confront your abomination. Doesn't that make you proud?

When a bit earlier, you said that "Snowpiercer" would be so much better than "Brazil", I first thought you would be like those few reviewers saying that because they are so stupid they see the blatant references to dumbed-down classism in "Snowpiercer", but were never able to tell Terry building his dystopical satire on the much more sophisticated (yes, even more sophisticated than Orwell's original "1984") critique of Western society found within Critical Theory, particularly "Dialectic of Enlightenment" and "One-dimensional man".

But further down this thread, I saw it's worse. Not only is your reactionary sentiment that freedom fighters, if successfull, will become the new oppressors, hardly a fresh or original concept brought forth by Bong's film to begin with, for instance British rock group The Who sang about it in 1971 as "Greet the new boss, same as the old boss!" And it was pretty much a dead horse then.

And you've also completely misunderstood not only the film's underlying message, but even the plot and its end, because it *IS* a happy ending. They successfully derail the train as well as the oppressive system, and instead of perishing because "the oppressive system is all there ever could be because of some unchangeable code of the universe, represented in the film by the hostile-to-life cold outside", they find that the cold that has reigned for close to two decades is beginning to end when they see a polar bear by the crash site. As Wikipedia affirms, the polar bear representing the very possibility of life outside Wilford's tyranny which he denied is the revealing plot twist at the end, making it definitely a happy one. By refuting Wilford's Malthusian logic, the film's basically saying that resources *CAN* be distributed equally and we'd still be better off than third-world countries nowadays. You failed in understanding the film, just like Wilford fails in the end, and you failed in understanding reality.

And that's because the main thing is this: Congrats on your very own, unauthorized, and somewhat garbled translation of selected quotes from the chapter "Nation and Race" from Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf", complete with endless tirades on "weak-minded, ignorant, and delusional liberals", or, as he calls them, "humanists and democrats". That's not "Darwinism", it's social-Darwinism.

In spite of the name of the latter, it didn't originate with Darwin and his theory, but with laissez-faire economist Herbert Spencer, eugenicist Francis Galton, and racist aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau (especially the latter a profound influence on Hitler), all pointing to Darwin as support (hence the incorrect handle of "social-Darwinism") while rather building their system upon Thomas Malthus's classicist democidal thought which had it that members of lower social classes had to be physically eradicated periodically for being "worthless surplus eaters" supposedly endangering the well-being of society as a whole.

This sentiment of social-Darwinism was even stronger in Germany up until 1945 (the country that gave rise to Hitler and Nazism) than it was in the English-speaking world, because of a poor and tendentious translation which referred to that "survival of the fittest" you're so glad of calling upon as "survival of the *STRONGEST*". Whereas "survival of the fittest" simply refers to neutral adaptation, "survival of the strongest" refers to violently killing off the weak as Malthus had demanded. Malthusian ideas become popular whenever Capitalism is in crisis and fails in providing wealth for all, hence social-Darwinism in response to the Panic of 1857, the racist Völkisch movement in Germany in response to the Panic of 1873, Nazism in response to the Great Depression, neo-liberal Reaconomics and Thatcher's Trickle-Through in response to the Nixon shock, and today's just as Malthusian, social-Darwinistic neo-liberalism in response to the current global economic crisis ignited by the Lehman desaster, the mortgage crisis and the banking crisis.

But Darwin himself dismissed all these self-appointed students of his as dangerous lunatics not entitled to call upon him in his 1882 "The Descent of Man" when he contrasted their barbarian and primitive Malthusian misrepresentation of his concept of the struggle for life as a Hobbesian brutal "warre of all against alle" with the idea of natural selection also giving rise to peaceful co-operation and symbiosis, be it within the same species or in-between species, to achieve as groups what individuals can't do, meliorating the competition grossly mis-represented by social-Darwinists. By refuting ineptly-named, petty, tight-handed, paranoid, and barbarian social-Darwinism, Darwin himself demonstrated that the instinct of sympathy for the weak does have its justified eminent place in a world that bears rich fruits for us all.
 
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[sarcasm]Yes, you're right. I'm clearly an idiot because I interpreted a film differently than how it was intended to be interpreted.[/quote]

Brazil is not a highly-sophisticated film. It's a silly science fiction film that has been taken way too seriously. Like I said, Snowpiercer isn't pretentious. You say it has a happy ending, with 2 members of the human race left alive in the middle of an endless field of snow and ice. Maybe on a symbolical level, it is a happy ending. Like you said: the train (oppressive dictatorship) is over-thrown (derailed). But, in the reality of the film, it is not a happy ending. Wikipedia is not evidence of the directors intention, in terms of tone.

Speaking of tone, you came across like you've got an axe to grind. I assume you know me from elsewhere on/off the forum, and this is a little misguided vendetta. Maybe not, though. Maybe this is how you come across, all the time. (I hope not, for your sake.)

I'm taking a break from this forum ATM, so I'm not going to continue to reply to this thread.

You failed in understanding the film, just like Wilford fails in the end, and you failed in understanding reality.
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I don't think I did fail. Art is open to interpretation. My interpretation is entirely valid. You might win some some semantic mini-debates about the absolute definition of academic terminology, but that's not something that interests me and it doesn't have any affect on my opinion/analysis of the film.

The weirdest / most revealing thing you wrote in your angry little post was this: "you failed in understanding reality"...

Your unarguably unparalleled ability to lazily confirm your interpretation of a Hollywood film with a wikipedia entry, written by some random, doesn't elevate you to a position of immense status among the intellectuals/philosophers of this world.

You think I don't understand the intentions of the film-maker.
In reality, I disagree with them.

All stories are open to interpretation.

This story is left open-ended.

Depending on your political orientation, you may be prone to interpreting it one way or another.
Depending on whether or not you skew towards optimism or pessimism, also.

I honestly think you'd struggle to explain how the two people left alive at the end of the film could possible survive.
But, hey, maybe you're like the film-maker. Maybe you believe that the human race will prevail, against all odds. Personally, I don't.

That doesn't make me wrong (about reality or the film). It makes me, arguably, a pessimist.

(...framing (burying) your argument with a bunch of insults and unnecessary academic horseplay doesn't help you win debates.)

There is no right and wrong. There are, however, insecure people who insist otherwise.

If you're going to respond, skip the history lesson mate... and consider that your tone makes you come across like a bit of an elitist douche bag.

Maybe explain why Brazil is an unarguably superior film rather than just stating it as a fact and calling anybody who disagrees with you an idiot.

the polar bear representing the very possibility of life outside Wilford's tyranny which he denied is the revealing plot twist at the end, making it definitely a happy one
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You're simplifying it. The bear represented life outside the train, yes, but also the reality of life outside the train. Polar bears are dangerous animals. They're stuck in the middle of nowhere, with limited technology/resources, surrounded by dangerous predators. Maybe we can agree that it is a bitter-sweet ending, rather than "definitely a happy one"?

...

Over half of your post was going off on a tangent about social Darwinism. I know what social Darwinism is. I don't think it was necessary to - really patronizingly - "educate" me on the differences between social Darwinism and Darwinism.

There was nothing wrong, whatsoever, with what I wrote about Darwinism. (Unless you're being a pedant.)

I'm not sure what you actually disagree with: that it had a happy ending?
How about we discuss that, rather than debate what the word "ending" means?
 
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I'll just chime in that this was the worst movie I've ever seen in my entire life to date. Including that one time I saw Dude Where's My Car? in the third grade.

I was so wary going in to see it because the three people I trust the most with stuff like this - comic book reviews, sci fi movies, hip hop records - all had radically different opinions. Damien loved it, Eric hated it, and Brandon thought it was decent enough for a watch. I cannot believe I made it through the entire thing. There were so many bizarro plot holes (who is this immortal vaguely fat guy in a suit running through the whole train? why? who does he work for? who cares? i'm really supposed to believe that a globe encompassing train track was built? seriously!?) and such over acted ridiculousness that I felt condescended to the entire film. A seriously huge waste of time.

The only nice thing was Tilda Swinton and she's there for all of 20 minutes.
 
i'm really supposed to believe that a globe encompassing train track was built? seriously!?
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The train revolves around the earth as the earth revolves around the sun.
This is an orbital allegory. (It takes one year, exactly, for both to occur.)

The fragility (read: impossibility) of the train system, therefore, reflects the fragility of life. You're not supposed to believe that it's literally possible for a train to circumnavigate the globe, without ever stopping, on tracks that aren't maintained. The film makes no effort to portray this as realistic. On the contrary, it is supposed to be impossible.
 
you can ask me to suspend my disbelief once (there is a train that circles the globe) but not over (train has impossible ratios) and over (no one has any parents) and over (no one gets sick, a relief since there are no doctors) and over (spoilers: the reveal in head car) and over (spoilers: polar bears) again.

ridiculous.
 
Dumbo the flying elephant.

Ridiculous.

Lord of the Rings.

Ridiculous.

Die Hard.

Ridiculous.

Life of Pi.

Ridiculous.

(etc)
 
ForEverAfter said:
Dumbo the flying elephant.

Ridiculous.

Lord of the Rings.

Ridiculous.

Die Hard.

Ridiculous.

Life of Pi.

Ridiculous.

(etc)
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Well, all those movies sucked pretty bad...minus Die Hard, but I have a soft spot for that movie that isn't related to the qualities I'd gauge most films by.
 
Kenickie said:
you can ask me to suspend my disbelief once (there is a train that circles the globe) but not over (train has impossible ratios) and over (no one has any parents) and over (no one gets sick, a relief since there are no doctors) and over (spoilers: the reveal in head car) and over (spoilers: polar bears) again.

ridiculous.
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^ exactly the problem with the film. action plots inherently create expectations of realism which clash with the film's otherwise allegorical nature.
 
sometimes, you just have to be willing to be entertained :) something which are rooted in reality and other which are not in any way rooted in reality can co-exist in a work of fiction. it hardly requires double-think.

alasdair
 
People who selectively have upper limits on their ability to suspend disbelief will miss out on a lot of magic.

action plots inherently create expectations of realism
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Action is a genre, in particular, that generally requires the suspension of disbelief.

It's a bit narrow minded to say that an action film has to be grounded in reality.
I could name a thousand that aren't.
 
i can't stand when people discount movies because there are plot holes and because the realism is not up to their level...

then they say they really liked man of steel and hurt locker
facepalm-smiley-gif-548.gif
 
Kenickie said:
you can ask me to suspend my disbelief once (there is a train that circles the globe) but not over (train has impossible ratios) and over (no one has any parents) and over (no one gets sick, a relief since there are no doctors) and over (spoilers: the reveal in head car) and over (spoilers: polar bears) again.

ridiculous.
Click to expand...

I can agree with all those things, but how were the polar bears not believable? That would be one of the few animals I would expect to see.


I sort of thought of the Gilliam guy (old guy who was the leader of the back before Curtis took over) as a doctor. When that guy gets his arm shattered he comes over and places a coat on him and seems to have some understanding of what to do next to help him.
 
Regarding the inherent unbelievability of action films: it's true, just considering the ubiquity within the genera of having one guy fight three or more athletic people who are seriously motivated to fight at once. It could be Bruce Lee, but if three or more people throw themselves on the fighter at once, holding their arms and legs, gnashing at the neck and balls with their teeth while scratching at his eyes, the person is screwed. Even highly realistic dramas (including those based on true stories) are difficult to pull off as "realistic" since the way they just happen to be dramatically appropriate given dramatic conventions is unlikely to begin with. Watching almost any movie requires suspension of disbelief. The believability of any film is determined by the level of logical coherence demonstrated between elements of the plot, i.e., its internal logic. If this was not absolutely true the fantasy genre could not exist.
 
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