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paperfax posted:I saw this movie last night, I thought it was okay but wasn't completely enamoured by it or anything. Definitely addresses some interesting issues though. Curtis is old enough to remember life before the train, so he's probably still got that instinctive negative reaction to roaches.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:31
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paperfax posted:The one thing that surprised me was Curtis' reaction to the "disgusting" origins of their food. Wasn't it just insects? As far as I know, insects are considered the "food of the future" and are already an important source of protein in some parts of the world. If anything, that was a reasonable portrayal of what mass-produced food might be like someday. I guess the broader issue was that they were essentially being force fed some highly processed mystery food and it wasn't what he expected, but still, I don't think it's as bad as he made it out to be It's obviously an intended "gross out" for Western audiences. While there's plenty of reasons to support entomophagy, the specific issue here is that this is all that the poor are given while the really good, quality food is reserved purely for the upper class. There's been concerns over the real-world development of things like cricket flour specifically because it could be used to feed huge masses of people for incredibly cheap, thus allowing the more palatable food to continue to be shipped out of their reach. It's rather like the grubby rags of the poor versus the fine-tailored suits of the rich. You can survive in the rags, but those rags only compound upon life's miseries. Vermain fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 22:34
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I had a sample energy bar that turned out to be made of crickets, was actually pretty good.
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Jul 7, 2014 23:08
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I kept expecting what I thought was the obvious, that the protein bars were the recycled dead of the train. Maybe the swerve was intentional. We never do find out what happens to the dead of the train, do we? The reveal worked mostly due to Chris Evans selling the poo poo out of the reaction. I wasn't too grossed out, but I definitely bought that he was super grossed out.
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Jul 7, 2014 23:11
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For those wondering about the ending to the french comic*: The story is basically about a man (Proloff) from the tail and a "everyone should be equal" woman (Adeline) the main sections making their way through the train. There's also a plot about how the train is slowing down a bit, and they need to release the tail section to be able to speed up again and keep going. They reach the car just behind the engine, shoot out the windows to escape the guards (which starts freezing them), and Adeline dies, the tail section is uncoupled and left to die, while Proloff gets let into the engine. There we meet the inventor/conductor of the engine (the analog to Wilford), who is dying from a plague that's been spreading through the train. The last few pages are a "some time later" scene where you see Proloff watching as the monitors and telephones and radios die. The last panel basically implies that the train keeps going, but there's no one left alive on it. * the first one, at least. There were others written about 20 years later, but I believe the first one was the main inspiration for the film.
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Jul 7, 2014 23:23
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I liked how illicit drugs ultimately provided the material to escape the closed system and enter a new exotic reality free of the former power relationships. The drug trade has been used to fund and thwart revolutionary movements for centuries. We spend the entire movie assuming that this substance is threatening to stop the revolution in it's tracks because of the destructive nature of addiction but this isn't the case at all. The drugs are manufactured in the poorest section of the train where they are nearly impossible to obtain, but as you move forward access becomes unlimited which of course feeds into the train's myth of scarcity for the lower classes and the myth of abundance for the higher classes that justifies the entire class structure. As the revolution moves forward through the train and the weight of history bares down on the engine, the audience is taken from the very concrete suffering of the lowest classes and gradually adds levels of abstraction. By the time we reach the head of the train, the world of the train has become so abstract to the leader of the revolution that he almost begins to buy into the narrative himself. Only when he literally has exploitation shoved in his face does the shock of the real break him out of the fugue state that power attainment has put him in. I think this is why the movie starts to lose people at the end of it, the audience isn't entirely aware that the world at the front of the train is one of abstraction and removal from the real.
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Jul 8, 2014 03:07
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:I kept expecting what I thought was the obvious, that the protein bars were the recycled dead of the train. Maybe the swerve was intentional. We never do find out what happens to the dead of the train, do we? Like 20 seconds before the reveal I was thinking to myself it'd be funny if there was a reveal where someone wonders in horror if the bars are made of people, and the guy running the protein car is all aghast and goes "no, no man! They're just roaches!" And then Bong went there. You're right that it wasn't too gross, which I was thankful for since I'm pathologically disgusted by roaches. The cartooniness of the shot where we see it probably helped a lot (I suspect that was a deliberate choice and not just crummy CGI). The Walking Dad posted:I liked how illicit drugs ultimately provided the material to escape the closed system and enter a new exotic reality free of the former power relationships. The drug trade has been used to fund and thwart revolutionary movements for centuries. We spend the entire movie assuming that this substance is threatening to stop the revolution in it's tracks because of the destructive nature of addiction but this isn't the case at all. Great points.
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Jul 8, 2014 03:22
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This is the second Chris Evans movie of the year where he seems to be fighting for what's right, only to realise he'd be sustaining a broken/corrupt system and dismantling it. It's a pretty specific thing to be in two movies about in one year. Reminds me of when you weren't allowed to make a movie about an amnesiac assassin without Brian Cox being in it. The movie was great. A lot of heart and absolutely gorgeous to look at. A mix of Gilliam and Jeunet. The axe fight is one of the most impressively staged scenes I've seen in a while. It was very Korean, the hallway filled with armed men patiently waiting for the slaughter
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Jul 8, 2014 04:27
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I think the real lesson here is we need to keep Chris Evans off of trains, if not for his sake then for others.
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Jul 8, 2014 05:35
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Also you have to love the Christian allegory told at the end about redemption and compassion only to have Namgoong Minsoo basically say "Yeah that's a great story and all but why does that matter?". It was almost like saying "Yeah there are people doing great things in all this adversity, but when the whole system is hosed why do personal anecdotes even matter anymore?" The protagonist has the fervor of a born again Christian in some ways. He was formerly lost but now he is found. But although he has found compassion for those of his own class, he is zealous in his hatred of the other classes in a way that the others just aren't. He straight up calls the woman at the end a "Whore". Not a very Christian thing to do. Maybe by the end of the film we aren't supposed to be rooting for the protagonist anymore. I also loved how they even included reactionaries in the plot. All the wealthy decadent folks don't give a poo poo about what goes on at the back of the train but when the front is disrupted they take up arms against the revolution. That was a lovely touch and it's something you rarely see addressed in cinema. The journey of Yona is pretty well done. Even though she is technically 17, the movie treats her as a child and she grows with every new train car they pass through. She is the only child character who never had to face the depravities of the tail car. She witnesses the bloodshed, she revels in the fervor of the classroom train. She takes in the ideologies and attitudes of her fellow passengers and by the end of the film she is partying and drunk out of her mind. The director clearly tried to make her a representation of today's youth in the developed world. If we didn't know her journey, her character at the end of the movie would leave no compelling impressions on us. She is just waking up from a decadent, drunken stupor. There is one thing that separates her from everyone else who has bought into the system though. She sees what's beneath the floor. She is completely without agency of her own within the train. Without the power to effect the events going on around her what can she do but crack a few one liners that seem a little prophetic? Even though she lacks the ability to shape events, she isn't ignorant, and in the end this lack of ignorance and openness to the truth is what decides the fate of the train. Her psychic ability may or may not be real, it doesn't matter, what does matter is that her mind isn't closed to the truth. The feelings and conflicts of the train, by the end of the film, are revealed to be prescribed and manufactured by the engine. Any anger that was felt was prescribed, the suffering was prescribed, the pride was prescribed, etc. What emotion is left for us to feel on the outside of the train? When the weight and certainty of ideology and history no longer dictate our actions? Yona and Tim answer their freedom with awe.
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Jul 8, 2014 06:21
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The Walking Dad posted:The protagonist has the fervor of a born again Christian in some ways. He was formerly lost but now he is found. But although he has found compassion for those of his own class, he is zealous in his hatred of the other classes in a way that the others just aren't. He straight up calls the woman at the end a "Whore". Not a very Christian thing to do. Maybe by the end of the film we aren't supposed to be rooting for the protagonist anymore. It's not particularly un-Christian. Curtis, like Christ, braids his whip to drive the moneychangers out of the temple, and dies to ensure the arrival of the "kingdom of Heaven." The un-Christian ending would have been for him to quietly acquiesce to a life as Wilford's replacement ala The Last Temptation of Christ.
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Jul 8, 2014 06:39
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Just got home from seeing this, I enjoyed it. One minor thing: The fact that they repeatedly emphasized that the schoolteacher was pregnant before she was killed seemed really gratuitous. I understand the point that was trying to be made, that Chris Evans' character was having to make incredibly difficult decisions, but this one just totally took me out of the movie. I felt like it was shocking for the sake of being shocking and didn't add anything to the picture.
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Jul 8, 2014 07:56
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Blast Fantasto posted:Just got home from seeing this, I enjoyed it. She was pregnant because she was a symbol of the cult of fertility, she found fulfillment performing her societal role as a perversion of the maternal image into a means of state control. She had to be killed to return maternity to a function of love and desire and not of duty. It's a revolution, not a day parade. This movie is like a true 300 for leftists. It shows in bloody detail what radicalism can achieve and doesn't shirk showing the costs of that achievement. The fact that it was filmed in a former Soviet soundstage is awesome. The Walking Dad fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 08:14
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The Walking Dad posted:Also you have to love the Christian allegory told at the end about redemption and compassion only to have Namgoong Minsoo basically say "Yeah that's a great story and all but why does that matter?". It was almost like saying "Yeah there are people doing great things in all this adversity, but when the whole system is hosed why do personal anecdotes even matter anymore?" I think my favorite line in the film was "My friend, you suffer from the misplaced optimism of the doomed." If you take it and look at the whole movie, it's as much a message to the audience as it is to characters at that moment. The only way everything ends is with a giant explosion that wipes away everything as it is, leaving a rare survivor here or there
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Jul 8, 2014 16:48
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Loved the music cue at the "don't open the door"/fish scene. Got a big grin on my face.
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Jul 8, 2014 17:43
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I don't see how you can really call this a leftist movie when the whole end reveal is that the class struggle is essentially meaningless.
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Jul 8, 2014 23:44
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Frackie Robinson posted:I don't see how you can really call this a leftist movie when the whole end reveal is that the class struggle is essentially meaningless. The class struggle is to destroy the capitalist system, which is done successfully. The ending is metaphorical and represents a new beginning outside of that system, in a world of new possibilities.
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Jul 8, 2014 23:47
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Frackie Robinson posted:I don't see how you can really call this a leftist movie when the whole end reveal is that the class struggle is essentially meaningless. Well, it's a leftist movie in that it's Marxist, not liberal - the original plan is for the poor to take the front of the train, essentially unseating the 'bad people' in power and becoming the 'good people' in power. The end reveal isn't that the class struggle is meaningless, but that the capitalist system is just a perpetual motion machine, chewing people up and spitting them out - Wilford's offer for Curtis to join/replace him wouldn't actually change anything, and the only real solution is to shut down the system and start again, hoping for a greater sense of egalitarianism the second time around. It's still a class struggle, but with a markedly more radical solution than 'make marginal changes within an inherently unfair system'. efb
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Jul 8, 2014 23:49
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The movie's style reminded me a lot of Old Boy for some reason with the explosions into violence. Feels oddly self-congratulatory in how edgy it tries to be with the  villain and self commentary and violence against everything 18%, oh man. The motto of the film seems to be that righteous violence (in the name of freedom?) solves everything and there's no sense of reflection beyond that point. Some people are sure to find it appealing as a work to commiserate with, but I didn't find it too persuasive.
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Jul 9, 2014 04:24
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It's not that violence solves everything, but that violence is sometimes both necessary and just to perform. Violence, like anything else, is a strategic choice with benefits and drawbacks. In this case, violence led to the destruction of the old system and the opening up of the possibility of a different, more just world, in exchange for the deaths of a great many people. Non-violence would have led, most likely, to mildly better conditions that are still sustained by a people-eating engine, and a system which, by its defined linearity, tends towards class separation. Which is the better option?
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Jul 9, 2014 04:47
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Just how graphically violent is Snowpiercer? I'm intrigued by what I've heard and not averse to some shootouts and brawling, but explicit gore and torture can ruin a movie for me.
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Jul 9, 2014 05:15
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Kestral posted:Just how graphically violent is Snowpiercer? I'm intrigued by what I've heard and not averse to some shootouts and brawling, but explicit gore and torture can ruin a movie for me. There is no gross out/torture porn so don't worry about that. There is blood splatter, a few people get shot and a lot of people die, but it's not on the level of SAW or anything. About the same level of gore you see on HBO series, not true blood, more like game of thrones.
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Jul 9, 2014 05:48
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Kestral posted:Just how graphically violent is Snowpiercer? I'm intrigued by what I've heard and not averse to some shootouts and brawling, but explicit gore and torture can ruin a movie for me. There is nothing shocking they cut away and most deaths are like "yeah, saw that coming". The majority of the deaths are actually kinda boring and you just click a counter for another dead body. Most of the action scenes have something over the top and dumb so it never feels visceral.
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Jul 9, 2014 06:37
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I saw Snowpiercer in January and it was the dumbest, most worthless waste of my time I've ever watched.
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Jul 10, 2014 01:19
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Kestral posted:Just how graphically violent is Snowpiercer? I'm intrigued by what I've heard and not averse to some shootouts and brawling, but explicit gore and torture can ruin a movie for me. It's PG-13 level
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Jul 10, 2014 01:32
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ANIME MONSTROSITY posted:I saw Snowpiercer in January and it was the dumbest, most worthless waste of my time I've ever watched. Go on.
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Jul 10, 2014 02:16
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It was a two hours long festival of pulling dumb poo poo from their asses. I can't believe they had the gall to call it a "plot"
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Jul 10, 2014 02:37
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Vermain posted:The class struggle is to destroy the capitalist system, which is done successfully. The ending is metaphorical and represents a new beginning outside of that system, in a world of new possibilities. And that new beginning is hosed from the get go as it's a drug addicted young girl, a little kid and polar bears.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:13
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Throwdown posted:And that new beginning is hosed from the get go as it's a drug addicted young girl, a little kid and polar bears. Was I the only one who had the perverse desire to see that polar bear slide down that snowy dune and offer the kids a Coke?
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Jul 10, 2014 04:18
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Hewlett posted:Was I the only one who had the perverse desire to see that polar bear slide down that snowy dune and offer the kids a Coke? Ahahaha, I made the exact same joke to my friends during the credits. Like how amazing would it be if the entire preceding two hours was the most obtuse and atonal product placement attempt.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:34
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Or it is hungry and kills them 5 seconds later.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:37
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Throwdown posted:And that new beginning is hosed from the get go as it's a drug addicted young girl, a little kid and polar bears. The ending, like the emergence of Adam and Eve from the Garden, is metaphorical.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:43
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:Or it is hungry and kills them 5 seconds later. Yeah, but what does he wash it down with?  EDIT: Nevermind, I forgot who we were talking about. He'll just be hungry 30 minutes later.
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Jul 10, 2014 05:30
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So I watched this movie but it had no subtitles, most of the time it was nbd but I was completely lost at Nam's little soliloquy before the last door. Can anyone give me the gist of it?
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Jul 10, 2014 06:15
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He said he didn't want to open the door to Wilford and instead wanted to blow open the doors to get off the train. Every year he'd been looking outside at the same spot and noticed that the snow is receding and he thinks they can survive outside. He's been collecting the drugs to use them as an explosive to escape the train.
Mu Zeta fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 07:15
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Mu Zeta posted:What was with everyone celebrating new years in the middle of a fight I heard someone mention that it could have been them buying time before the tunnel, but whether it was that or some kind of strong tradition, it felt peculiar as hell. The group that I watched this movie with noticed some serious homoerotic subtext going on. Obviously, the two main henchmen were very likely lovers, as evidenced by the strangely intimate interactions between them and henchman #2's death grudge against Yona for killing his boyfriend. Also, for the first half of the movie there was some strong speculation that Curtis and Edgar have an intimate relationship of some kind. Of course this is shot down pretty heavily by the end when it's revealed that Evan was nearly eaten by Curtis as an infant so it's more of a parental thing, but watching this for the first time, the situation was Henchman A kills Evan, Yona kills Henchman A, Curtis and Henchman B (who appear to be individually scorned lovers) have a melodramatic shootout, and finish the fight in what is essentially a bath house.
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Jul 10, 2014 07:22
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Vermain posted:The ending, like the emergence of Adam and Eve from the Garden, is metaphorical. Oh I know, it's just that I found humor in the whole "well, their hosed" scenario. I also liked when the director said in an interview that "yeah, everyone else is dead. One aspect I liked about the movie is that in the end there are very few people who can be considered "good", including our protagonist with the baby eating and all, which in itself I found stupid. They are killing humans for survival, they just killed the mother, she has more meat to survive on. Also, I wonder how many people died from shock after lopping their limbs off.
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Jul 10, 2014 09:53
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I think the commentators at Slate do a pretty good job talking about the movie for those interested. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2014/06/snowpiercer_directed_by_bong_joon_ho_reviewed.html The best point that they made was that maybe the movie isn't an affirmation to the revolution/class struggle narrative and is actually a conservative critique to the blunt, stupid radical solutions After all, in the start of the movie, the radical solution to global warming got them in the mess - the Chekhov's gun waiting to be fired.
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Jul 10, 2014 14:07
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Just realized that Curtis was not actually the first person to go the entire length of the train, like Wilford said he was. At the very least, Wilford's lady friend and the two children she stole at the beginning did it, plus whatever children before that. Ruined the movie for me.
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Jul 11, 2014 19:48
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William T. Hornaday posted:Just realized that Curtis was not actually the first person to go the entire length of the train, like Wilford said he was. At the very least, Wilford's lady friend and the two children she stole at the beginning did it, plus whatever children before that. No the lady never went all the way back to the end of the train. Also I'm not so sure that the children went all the way to the rear end of the train either.
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Jul 11, 2014 20:06
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