[REVIEW] Heading Forward and Breaking Out: The Snowpiercer
[REVIEW] Heading Forward and Breaking Out: The Snowpiercer
  • Shin Hyun-a (ST Reporter)
  • 승인 2013.10.09 11:00
  • 댓글 0
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Trains can make us feel lonely. The train in the animation Eunhachuldo 999 and those in many other films are depicted as lonely and rusty locomotives, but the train in the movie The Snowpiercer must be the loneliest one yet. Try to imagine. All the life forms on Earth have become ice cold due to the sudden change in the climate caused by a scientific experiment. The train, which carries the last survivors of the disaster, chugs along on its lonely, never-ending route through the dead lands. This is the background of the movie The Snowpiercer.

 

▲ Is charging to the engine reallynecessary?

 

In contrast to the outside world, where you cannot find any trace of life, there is a small, active world inside the train. This world consists of two kinds of people: the rich in the front section, who managed to buy their tickets to get on the train, and the people in the tail section, who fought their way in without paying. The people in the front section enjoy good food and nice amenities and even drink wine and get high on drugs. Meanwhile, the people in the tail section cannot enjoy such luxuries. On the 17th year of the train’s run, the people in the tail section decide to stand up against those in the front section to gain their rights by taking over the train’s core: the engine. The young Kurtis from the tail section leads the revolution to get to the front section with the tail section leader, Gillium. Joining them are others from the tail section, including Tanya and Andrew. After making their way to the jail section, they team up with the train’s security specialist Namgung Minsu and his daughter Yona and continue forward with the help of these two. In the process of doing this, they come across obstacles like the train minister Mason and her minions. Kurtis manages to get to the engine section and meets Wilford, the master of the train. There, he finds out that his whole revolution was just a scheme designed by Wilford. Wilford thinks highly of Kurtis’s leadership and offers to him his place as the leader of the train. Kurtis rejects Wilford’s offer, and in the end, he dies while saving Yona and Tanya’s son. Thanks to his sacrifice, the two survive the train explosion and become the last humans on Earth. Taking their first step outside the train, the two fall into despair when they find out that they are in the new frozen world. The last scene of the movie, however, reveals a ray of hope when the two see a polar bear climbing a mountain, and find out that there is still hope for the living.
 
▲ The Director, Bong Junho wishes these 4 movies to be considered as his early works including The Snowpiercer.
As the story takes place inside a train, there can be only one direction of movement: from the back to the front. The basic story line is set from the very beginning. The people in the tail section, led by Kurtis, take action to free themselves from their current sorry status, and their only way to do this is by heading forward. Some characters, however, namely Namgung Minsu and his daughter Yona, have different ideas. They believe that the key to freedom lies not in the front section but outside the train. Kurtis thinks they’re crazy because he doesn’t know what it’s like outside the train, and it’s too risky to leave the train. He thus heads to the front section alone, only to find that his revolution was not the way to obtain perfect freedom. Namgung was right. He was only acting as a part of the unfair cycle, and getting to the front section wasn’t the way to cut such cycle but instead reproduces it. As the actor Song Kang-ho (Namgung Minsu) said in an interview, the train is a miniature replica of our world. The world in the train is built on the interests of the upper class, and rushing to get to the very front won’t change the world’s fundamental problem. Rich people in reality say something like this to those who are living miserably: “Don’t be so cheeky. If you’re jealous, work your way up to the upper class.” If people work their way up desperately, however, and finally become part of the upper class, will it solve the underlying problem of the society? It will only perpetuate or even reinforce the cycle. Before watching the movie, most people thought that this movie will be about pulling the bad guy off the throne and taking his place to gain freedom. As they watched the movie, however, they found out that perfect freedom could be achieved only by breaking out of and breaking down the wrong-from-the-scratch system.
 
At the end of the movie, the train explodes, and only two people manage to break free from the wrecked train: Yona and Timmy (Tanya’s son), the two last humans on Earth. The fun fact here is that they are Asian and African, respectively, while most of the people in the front section were whites. I think that the survivors’ races symbolize that they have overcome the unfair system ; in this case, the white people’s society. The two seem hopeless on the ground because it’s their first time there. In such desperate circumstances, however, they find a polar bear. I’m pretty sure that the two find hope of surviving in the bear (although this part isn’t shown in the movie), realizing that like the bear, they still have a chance to live. I think that what Director Bong is trying to say in this scene is that it will be hard to live without the system at first, with no one dominating, and it might even be a chaotic situation, but there is still hope that we can make a better world.
There were lots of other features and morals in the movie, and the unique style of Director Bong Jun-ho. Nevertheless, the comparison of the acts of heading forward and of breaking out was the most shocking and impressive element of the movie. Overall, The Snowpiercer gives you food for thought applied to the real world we’re living in, but it isn’t lecturing, and it’s fun to watch. I strongly recommend this movie to the Soongsilians who have not seen it yet.

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