Maggie McMuffin hops onto the train and eats babies with Chris Evans in her re-view of Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, “everything an action movie should be.”
For the rest of my life, I will probably consider Fury Road to be the defining action movie of my youth. Feminism, a takedown of toxic masculinity, environmental issues, and absolute bananas stunts and practical effects made it an instant classic.
But we’re not here about that.
We’re here about another film which I fucking love. Snowpiercer. I described it to a wee baby* as “that movie where the world is in eternal winter so humanity gets on a train and the poor people at the back of the train get fed up with being treated bad so they fight their way to the front of the train to kill the rich people in charge of the train so they can be in control of the train.”
“I’m sure that goes horribly for everyone.”
It sure does!
Fury Road is an endless desert drive filled with hope. Snowpiercer is not. It has, as one of the mini-bosses says, “the misplaced optimism of the doomed.” These people fight because they must. There is no other choice. And we learn that this is literal. The revolution we see in the film, like the ones that came before it, was manufactured by the front of the train to “balance” the population. The rear end of the train exists merely to pump out kids that can be taken for manual labor and be grateful to the front for engaging in trickledown economics that has them eating literal shit…which is an improvement over what they had before? Anyone who has seen this movie or just was on the internet at the time knows this movie as two things:
- Chris Evans covering his face in the Avengers shawarma sting because he valiantly refused to shave his Snowpiercer beard for it
- The movie where Chris Evans monologues about eating a baby
Both of these things are true. Evans does sport a magnificent beard throughout the film and near the end delivers a monologue about how, when the train first started, the rear passengers resorted to cannibalism. Not just “oh no we have to” cannibalism, I mean nature documentary chimpanzee behavior where they’d murder women so they could take a eat her baby because
The monologue also covers how Evans character, Curtis Everett, stopped being a hooligan and stepped up into being a community pillar. He has been groomed for leadership, but the guilt of his past actions prevents him from accepting any sort of mantle. Too bad! This isn’t something he gets a say in! As frequently stated, everyone on the train has their preordained place: those at the front and those in the rear. We know this is not exactly true because they routinely remove people from the rear to perform tasks: making the protein bricks, playing the violin, and even becoming parts of the train as the original mechanicals reach the end of their life span. But you can’t ask questions in such a rigid hierarchy. Asking questions or stepping out of line leads to bad things more than good. You might get a single piece of sushi, but it’s more likely you’ll lose your arm while Tilda Swinton gives a speech about how one must “be a shoe.”
That’s the thing I love about Snowpiercer: it is giving some amazing social commentary. The leader of the train is deified. The upper classes enjoy decadence but complain they’ve got it bad, too. The poor live in cramped conditions. Drug abuse is rampant.
It is also a B movie. It is a video game. Each train car is a level to be completed, with a battle during every few of them. For god’s sake, there is a car full of masked men in black who take turns dipping their axes into a fish before unleashing hell. There’s a sauna fight scene. There’s a creepy school room with a game-changing reveal about enemy firepower!
Snowpiercer fucks. Snowpiercer is everything an action movie should be. It is political without being preachy. It is full of action. It is character-driven and contains moments of genuine loss and emotion. I’ve seen this movie several times, and each time that Curtis makes the difficult decision to sacrifice Edgar**, how it is set up as a foil to Mason sacrificing a lieutenant without a thought, gets me. The ensemble cast is packed with talent from around the world, including Octavia Spencer, Song Kang-ho, John Hurt, and the guy who played Buttons on Our Flag Means Death. There are multiple languages but minimal subtitles, keeping the polyglottal train as a fact because THE TRAIN IS THE WORLD. It is a metaphor you see, this crazy train, and we are gonna milk that metaphor like the cows we do not see but are assured are somewhere on this train (again: don’t ask too many questions). The worldbuilding within that metaphor is great and I deeply considered making this review a “List of 25 Details in Snowpiercer that Blow My Mind.”
And despite that fun, despite the wondrous production design, despite the beards, this movie is crushing. The first time I saw it was at the SIFF Uptown in Seattle before a shift at the strip club. I saw it with a waitress who would go on to be a manager and form a lot of enemies. The second time I saw it was in 2020 during lockdown, shortly before the George Floyd protests rocked the nation and then the powers that be decided we peasants needed to be kept distracted by long commutes and regular work. The third time was last week, piecemeal, as I struggled with an incredibly busy two weeks of ‘living the dream’.*** I wanted so badly to watch this movie and tell you all about it, but I was literally falling asleep on my feet. No way could I stay awake sitting still on a couch. Here, the video game layout saved me; it was easy to find spots to pause, places to take a break, and then hop back into when I had a spare ten minutes. I watched more of the revolution fall, watched personal hardships unfold that became more important than rear versus front, watched like four or five parent/child relationships play out while wrestling with whether to call my estranged dad for Father’s Day but I finally got to it. I got to the front of the train and I got to know what we all fought for.
And here is where I will divest from spoilers. Because Chris Evans gives the FIRST monologue of that section. The third is by Ed Harris, the benevolent Wilford who made the world he wanted. But the second, delivered by Song, Bong Joon-ho’s main guy who would help to make Oscar history on Parasite****, is the one that people should be paying attention to. Because that man has been watching and waiting beyond what anyone in the rear or the front imagined. On first watch, he seems crazy, and on subsequent watches, he still seems crazy. Because optimism is crazy. Visionary ideas are crazy. Letting the old world die despite not having a new one in place is crazy. The world was not made to work for everyone. Trying to take over the world will not save us. He is not the hero of the movie because the movie does not have one hero. It has multiple people fighting to exist in an inflexible world. And in the end it has two children, born and raised on the train, who take the first steps into a new world. What once seemed crazy now carries more hope than either of the have ever known.
Okay fine here’s a list of cool things
- Several characters have adaptive disabilities. They are all of course played by able-bodied actors but it’s always nice to see disabled people surviving the dystopia without it being A THING.
- The movie constantly reflects back on itself and has characters dealing with the past. It really is a movie that benefits from multiple rewatches.
- Yona and her father Namsoong are both drug addicts and the movie handles this with care. Originally seen through the perspective of Curtis it is viewed as a detriment, but as the film goes on, we the audience see it as a coping mechanism and a literal way out. It’s quite well done.
- Tilda Swinton goes places in this. The definition of BOLD CHOICES.
- Chris Evans has the charisma to be one of the greatest leading men Hollywood has ever seen. He’s been a pillar of pop culture for two decades now, he has been a parody of an action star, he has done this serious action movie. I am so glad he’s out of his Disney contract and can pursue only the things he wants to do.
- The worldbuilding is strong but…no, really, don’t start asking questions. It’s airtight in the way a spaceship hull in a move is: really secure until it’s not.
* My 26-year-old mentee
** His much younger mentee and also the baby he almost ate
*** For those that have known me for years and have seen what I consider “very busy,” please know that the last two weeks were even busier than that
*** Another movie about class struggles with a bonkers final act
— Maggie McMuffin
10 Years Ago: Films in Retrospective 