Snowpiercer (2013)

Let me start by selling Snowpiercer to you. MCU shills, this film’s cast is led by a bearded Chris Evans. Leftists, the film offers commentaries on various topics featured on your Instagram story’ rants. Action film lovers will be thrilled by the gory fight sequences. Cinephiles will truly appreciate the cinematography, score and acting prowess of Tilda Swinton. Also, Snowpiercer is directed by Bong Joon Ho. You know, the guy who directed Parasite and created history at the 2020 Academy Awards. Still not convinced? Continue reading as I attempt to stray away from spoiler territory.

If you hate reading pretentious articles by film-schoolers who treat the thesaurus as their Bible, you’ve come to the right place. I fervently abhor those galling leeches. You didn’t actually believe me, did you?

Snowpiercer (not to be confused with the deplorable Netflix series), a film adaptation of 1982 French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans release CW-7 in the atmosphere to reverse global warming. The plan fails spectacularly and all life is frozen to death. The last few surviving humans are living on a train, the only remaining habitable place, which operates perfectly on an engine invented by a visionary genius. YEAH, SCIENCE! Got it? Breaking Bad reference? Nobody? Moving on. The train is a class divide. The front cars enjoy steaks and raves while the tail-enders suffice solely on “protein blocks” and miserable living conditions. Curtis Everett (Chris Evans), a tail-ender, leads a revolution to reach the front carriage, where Wilford (the genius visionary) resides with his beloved Sacred Engine’, to establish a just order on the train.

What I love most about Snowpiercer is that it addresses various important issues without inflicting its message and getting too preachy. Therefore, allow me to do the honours.

CW-7, the geoengineering element of the film, is the antonymous embodiment of “prevention is better than cure.” Like Snowpiercer, we live in a world which won’t prevent climate change but would rather reverse it. A world where a certain leader of a superpower believes climate change is a “hoax.” A world where a teenager “dares” to take charge, only to be turned into a meme.

The not-so-uncanny resemblance in the movie is further witnessed when Wilfred stands to benefit from the environmental catastrophe and attains a self-ordained God-like status. Corporations grant salvation to the privileged, meanwhile, the voices of those who are adversely affected by capitalism are suppressed, often through police brutality as seen in the movie too.

The train has a flawlessly designed system to ensure that it doesn’t run out of its resources. Sushi is served biannually to the rich, unbeknownst to the tail-enders gobbling protein blocks for more than a decade. Environmental sustainability is flawlessly accomplished in the metaphorical train at the cost of social justice. A pandemic permits nature a desperate break but as I sip my dalgona coffee while writing this, another migrant labourer’s stomach growls out of starvation.

Snowpiercer looks an awful lot like our world today and does a brilliant job at giving the audiences a glimpse of what it may come down to. However, if you don’t care about all of that crap, the movie is still a marvellous sci-fi thriller one will surely relish.