We saw Snowpiercer and I still hate post-apocalyptica

[drwex]

Snowpiercer is Bong Joon Ho writing and directing a post-apocalyptic adventure tale. Based on the idea that we could freeze the entire world to death yet somehow keep going a massive globe-traveling train which is long enough to house and feed hundreds of people and that is fueled with some kind of hallucinogenic post-nuclear waste... OK, I give up. The premise of the movie isn't even worth trying to examine. 0/4 stars, you will wish you had your two hours of life back.

Unfortunately, you can't totally ignore this tattered excuse for a set-up because the plot doesn't just revolve around the predictable rebellion-of-the-oppressed-lower-caste led by Chris Evans as Curtis. In order to get through the security systems locking one car from another Curtis recruits a drug-addled former security-system designer, Namgoong Minsu. With his hop-headed and possibly psychic ?girlfriend? Yona, Minsu has his own reasons for helping Curtis make it to the front of the train where he will face the sudden yet inevitable betrayal of... oh, please, don't tell me you didn't see THAT coming a million miles away.

Look, it's not just that the premise is terrible (it is) and the plot is hackneyed (it is). It's that I Just Don't Care. Once upon a long ago I read Nevil Shute's On The Beach, a novel about survivors of a world-ending nuclear war in a submarine trying to reach Australia. About 2/3 of the way through the book I realized that I had run out of damns to give because even if they did make it to Australia they were all going to die anyway, in short and gruesome order. Same thing with Snowpiercer. Even if I give them all the credit and ignore all the wrong, they're still dead. Dead dead dead. So everything they do is meaningless - and I don't invoke the bizarre meaninglessness of, say, Waiting for Godot. I mean, like, meaningless because there is no future and so no present action can have any lasting effect. Therefore, I do not care. They could all die, or all kill each other in the next scene in yet another axe-swinging gore-fest or some cute child might somehow miraculously live. It's all the same in the end.

As a footnote, I will say that Tilda Swinton does a remarkable job of playing a clearly unhinged sadist fanatic.

Comments

[elfy.livejournal.com]

You probably don't care, but I have links to two, as I think, good meta-texts to Snowpiercer.
But then, I also really liked that movie ;)

[drwex]

Meta-texts? And what, dear lords enlighten me what, did you like about it?

[elfy.livejournal.com]

Texts about the movie, analysing it.

Hm, I didn't try to see it as a train literally traveling the world and literaly being a closed ecosystem. I saw it as the metaphor it is supposed to be. I liked the cinematography, I liked many of the characters.
But it seems indeed that people either hate the movie or like it. *shrugs*

[silentq.livejournal.com]

I'm another one in the like it column. I'm a fan of the director and went in knowing that it was based on a graphic novel. I liked it more for the character interactions rather than the plot.

[drwex]

I think it was your +1 that caused me to put it on my list, which is not an indictment, just a memory. Hmm, character interactions... I am having a hard time thinking of any that seemed special to me.

[drwex]

Oh I totally get that it was a metaphor. Had it been fully self-contained I would've been willing to forgive a lot more but the whole plot about getting out of the train and then the ending (to me) read as Ho saying "no, it's not a metaphor; it's literally this and this is what happens."

[elfy.livejournal.com]

I never saw the ending as that.

If you want to read, do so, if not, fine as well:
http://elucipher.tumblr.com/post/91587404065/meta-snowpiercer
http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/a-snowpiercer-thinkpiece-not-to-be-taken-too-seriously-but-for-very-serious-reasons-or-the-worst-revenge-is-a-living-will/

But if you hate post-apocalyptic I guess nothing can ease your opinion anyway ;)

[drwex]

Never is a very long time. I happen to have Blade Runner on my mind as I was discussing it with someone else recently, so take that as a counter-example. The replicants (and Deckard, if you believe that he is one too) are doomed. They're going to die, so in some sense nothing they do matter but in fact the entire film casts them as searching for meaning, trying to understand themselves and their lives and either be remembered as someone or do something memorable or seek meaning from their creator. Yes, they die but I find I care about them because of the meaningfulness of their actions. Now to read your linked metas...

OK so the first one says essentially what I was saying - yes, it's an allegory and if it had been confined to Curtis's story I would've liked it better. I buy it as an allegorical fiction. My problem is with the ending, which the reviewer idealizes - the idea that you must destroy the system to escape it... OK. But the reviewer seems to want to pile on allegories without any concern for consistency (e.g. using an Adam/Eve allegory, which is kind of the ultimate white progenitor myth on top of all the commentary about how race is used in the film).

And then the second review more or less belabors the same point - yep, it's an allegory. Then he says, "Everybody in this movie needs to die, and they all do, thank God." Right, so there's where we part ways. If everyone in the movie needs to die then I didn't need to watch that movie. I'd rather watch a movie where some of the people might need to die but perhaps some do not. That utter base hatred of humanity is what I disdain, even more than the pointlessness of post-apocalyptica.

I do appreciate the links, don't get me wrong. I just feel they say the same thing in a lot more words; where we part ways is in the "and therefor it's a bad/good movie."

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

With his hop-headed and possibly psychic ?girlfriend? Yona

Daughter. Her mother was the Inuit woman he talked about, who left the train with a small band and was frozen.

[drwex]

Right, right, I'd forgotten that bit.

Ditto with hubby

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

I then had a hard time getting some of the images out of my head. It was too close to Holocaust images for me. The close cropped heads, trains. I should have stopped watching MUCh earlier or advocated strongly for something else.

BLEH

[minkrose]

Bleh, I already super didn't want to see this movie, but that seals it for me. Wow. I couldn't handle that at all; we accidentally got on a Holocaust train car in a train museum in the Netherlands (downside of not being able to read the signage) and I flipped the fuck out. For many reasons, which I'd prefer to explain in person (but I'm fine with being asked!). I could tell as soon as we got inside. (To the museum's credit, they did have a sign, and normally it would've been more clear, but they'd rearranged the entire museum to feature a special exhibit, so the layout was completely altered from the English guide.)

Anyway. Such Nope. I also find I hate dystopias and post-apocalyptic scenarios. Yet people cannot seem to STFU about this movie. Sigh.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Waiting for Godot is pretty cool in its own absurdist way.

Thanks for the warning about Snowpiercer.

[drwex]

Godot is one of my favorite plays, if done well, and absolute torture if done badly.

[dcltdw]

Huh. I had read a teaser or two before seeing it, so I knew about the perpetual motion engine, so I had a very different perspective walking in: okay, the premise is a kludge. Now what? To which the answer was: a character film, set in a noir/dystopia. I knew something was going to betray everyone, but there were a lot of contenders.

That said, the movie was too dark for me, but that's not much of a surprise: I'm not a big fan of post-apocalypse films, mostly because at some point, they break out the routine of HEY GUYS WE'RE REALLY GRITTY LIKE REALLY REALLY GRITTY DO YOU SEE THIS GRIT? and I'm like, please, was that actually necessary? To me, no. (The Robocop series, to me, is the poster child of descent-into-unnecessary-grittiness. Bleagh.)

So mostly, I thought the movie was good for two reasons:
* Swinton does an amazing job; and,
* All of the film is a setup for Evans' character's moral climax, which I thought was very well done.

---

But yeah, if you don't know the setup is a kludge and/or don't immediately accept that, you're so very screwed. It's like watching Akira and not realizing that anime is not trying to follow the rules of physics.

[minkrose]

Fwiw, this is the HUGELY SPOILERIFIC post/review written by an internet friend of mine that convinced me NOT to see this movie: http://copperbadge.livejournal.com/3699869.html

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

many of Tilda Swinton's roles seem to be unhinged in some way...I'm not saying that's a bad thing, though.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

My reaction to "I hate post-apocalyptica" is the same reaction as my reaction to "I hate chocolate."

"More for me!" :P

(I do not require that my friends share ALL my tastes.)