Distributor: Anchor Bay
Release Date: October 21, 2014
MSRP: $29.99
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Film: B+ / Video: A- / Audio: A / Extras: B+
By some degree the best of the recent American projects of Korean auteurs, Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer uses its conceit of a train carrying the last surviving humans in a dystopic world to lock in a linear narrative about class war. Forced to move compartment by compartment, a ragged group of poor caboose occupants led by Curtis (Chris Evans) brutally fights their way to the front of the train in an attempt to equalize the transport’s rigid class system. It’s an admirably straightforward premise at a time in which genre films have been weighed down by the “plausibility” requirements foisted onto blockbusters, necessitating at least a half-hour (if not an entire franchise starter) to adequately set up characters and the odds and ends of their world. Snowpiercer restricts a background of climate change and the foolish overcompensation of science to a text crawl, and it lets the weird energy of each train car speak for the microcosms fostered in its closed ecosystem.
Early on in the film, the grime-caked cots of the tail section play into the current blockbuster fetish for “gritty realism,” with Captain America himself as a brooding, humorless white savior. Around the time Curtis and his crew kill their way into a cabin with windows and see sunlight for the first time in nearly 20 years, however, the film is suddenly revealed to be a wide-ranging parody on American blockbusters, skewering their cultural takeover of international box offices much the same way Bong’s The Host savaged lingering US troop presence throughout the world. The violence in Snowpiercer is gorier than any of the bloodless carnage slipped through the MPAA with a PG-13, but it also displays flashes of un-serious absurdity. The most prominent example of this comes in a brawl between the tail-section passengers and a cabin filled with masked fighters who pass around a dead fish to wet their blades with blood, culminating in a sight gag of Curtis slipping on the dropped ichthye.
Performance and pace are also given freer rein. At times, the film halts to bask in a surreal moment, such as the tailies venturing into an aquarium car and being served sushi, or staring longingly at the frozen corpses of their revolutionary forebears, who ventured outside the train and died within meters. But the real joy lies in the supporting actors, who play their parts with a ferocity that has been slowly drained out of American movies. Octavia Spencer, as a mother seeking her abducted son, brims over with a fury that is rarely stated but can cow those who wish to marginalize her. Song Kang-ho and Go Ah-sung appear, in a Host nod, as a father and daughter whose language barrier matches their rambunctious motives, playing along with Curtis’s crew but clearly chasing their own narrative, refusing to be just servants for the American hero. Best of all is Tilda Swinton as the craven true believer Mason, turning in a performance of such fearless caricature that she pops out false teeth in a show of submission or throws a full-body shrug at the prospect of a lackey being killed if she doesn’t surrender. To watch the backing cast is to wonder why we have to spend any time at all with a limp noodle like Curtis, something the film regularly calls attention to as it implicitly asks why this joyless type now defines movie protagonists.
Despite sending up so many common tropes of the modern blockbuster, Snowpiercer occasionally succumbs to some of the same flaws. With the space restricted by the confines of the train, the early riot scenes are typically reduced to the sort of incomprehensible maelstrom that defines contemporary action cinema. (Happily, later scenes benefit from the viciously culled numbers of police and rebels, and a late fight scene in a sauna car is exquisitely low-key.) And even if the film takes pains to mock Curtis as a representative of over-stressed, under-sexed brooders, he is still the focal point, and occasionally wrests the movie away from its manic energy to be dour. Nonetheless, this is an exhilarating film, not least because it shows a high-profile international director coming to Hollywood and exposing its flaws instead of adopting them to keep producers happy. It also articulates one of the most radical political positions in a recent genre film, portraying armed revolution as justified but susceptible to restarting a cycle of abuse and tyranny, where the only solution to the ingrained exploitation and classism of human civilization may be willful self-extinction.
A/V
Snowpiercer contrasts dim, muddy corridors with washed-out, glossy comfort cabins, and both are handled equally well by Anchor Bay’s impeccable transfer. Early scenes look intentionally rough, but no flaws in the image itself can be discerned, and detail is consistently strong and textured. Audio is also great, combining the score and the constant ambient noise in the surrounding channels to never give your ears a moment’s peace while clearly mixing dialogue in the central speaker. There are even clearly directed sounds isolated in individual channels, aurally fleshing out the contours of the confined spaces.
Extras
Disc one comes with a critics commentary led by Scott Weinberg, with other speakers dropping in and out of the track. Accordingly, it’s a mixed bag, often forgoing relevant analysis for dubious referential connections and, at times, excessive mutual flattery between the assembled critics. Occasionally, someone makes a keen observation—such as thematically linking the windowless cabins of the neglected tail section with the most luxuriously sealed off compartments in the front—but for the most part this is a frustratingly inert track.
More rewarding are the extras on the second disc. An hour-long French documentary charts the project from its conception as a comic book in the ‘80s all the way through the film’s production. It contains copious footage of the shoot and the film’s premieres, but it intriguingly filters everything through the perspectives of Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette, the two surviving creators of the comic, rooting even behind-the-scenes footage in their emotional journey in finally seeing their work adapted. “The Birth of Snowpiercer” is a short doc that gives a general overview of the film and its various elements, while “The Characters” contains some cast interviews describing the more notable characters. Also included are an animated prologue, some brief clips from Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton talking about the film, footage from the Alamo Drafthouse’s promotional train ride and outdoor screening, and finally, some concept art galleries.
Overall
Bong Joon-ho’s English-language debut is a straightforward film that blurs the lines between text and subtext, yet it contains numerous pleasures that only come into sharpest focus with repeat viewings. With an excellent A/V transfer and a solid slate of extras, it deserves placement in the collections of any genre film fan.