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Tonight’s film was Snowpiercer and what a strange film it was. A mostly Korean production, but with a lot of Czech participation, based on a French book, the might be the most fun you’ve had at the movies since The Road. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, frozen over after an attempt at stopping global warming went wrong in 2014, the little that’s left of humanity is circling around the icy world on a perpetual motion train, designed by a wealthy industrialist.
As you might guess, social segregation has set in, with the wealthy living a life of decadent ease in the front of the train and the dirty, miserable underclass being in the back. Bloody rebellion seems certain. When a leader emerges, things get real bad. What will happen? Will the rebellion succeed? Are things really as they seem? You have to see it to find out. I found myself thinking about movies like not only The Road, but The Hunger Games, Soylent Green (a synthetic food plays and important role), Elysium, On the Beach and elements of lot of other stories of a dismal future.
This movie is intense, brutal, savage, and often really ugly and sometimes suffers from dialog that doesn’t seem to render as well in English as it might in Korean, including one serious verbal blooper that brought out a lot of laughs on the subject of baby-eating. I was somewhat surprised to see a full theater, even if it was small one, and an action and FX heavy sci-fi movie at the usually artsy Charles. It’s probably NOT like anything else you will see this summer and, if you can take it, it’s well worth updating your picture of the human-engineered end of the world. The effects are quite good and, but the time the movie is under way, you forget that the basic premise of the whole world remnant riding around on a train doesn’t really make much sense, because the train just seems like a metaphor for the worst in human stupidity. The movie really drags you in, quite amazing.
As you might guess, social segregation has set in, with the wealthy living a life of decadent ease in the front of the train and the dirty, miserable underclass being in the back. Bloody rebellion seems certain. When a leader emerges, things get real bad. What will happen? Will the rebellion succeed? Are things really as they seem? You have to see it to find out. I found myself thinking about movies like not only The Road, but The Hunger Games, Soylent Green (a synthetic food plays and important role), Elysium, On the Beach and elements of lot of other stories of a dismal future.
This movie is intense, brutal, savage, and often really ugly and sometimes suffers from dialog that doesn’t seem to render as well in English as it might in Korean, including one serious verbal blooper that brought out a lot of laughs on the subject of baby-eating. I was somewhat surprised to see a full theater, even if it was small one, and an action and FX heavy sci-fi movie at the usually artsy Charles. It’s probably NOT like anything else you will see this summer and, if you can take it, it’s well worth updating your picture of the human-engineered end of the world. The effects are quite good and, but the time the movie is under way, you forget that the basic premise of the whole world remnant riding around on a train doesn’t really make much sense, because the train just seems like a metaphor for the worst in human stupidity. The movie really drags you in, quite amazing.
