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The arguments that the train was a stupid and ineffective society seem to completely miss the point of the movie, which is that the train is a stupid and ineffective society. Yes, of course it would have been better to build a bunker or have a machine car to produce more parts. But this isn't an optimal solution or a wonderful ark built by mankind's best and brightest, it's explicitly a vanity project by a spoiled madman stroking his ego. The fact that this is a flawed, unsustainable, broken, stupid system is literally the message of the film: that's why it has to blow up at the end, because the basic setup is inherently unsustainable and unsalvageable. Critiquing the setup of the train for inefficiency is like looking at North Korea and saying "Why don't they invest in educating and feeding their population? That would be a way more effective society! Suspension of disbelief destroyed!" I feel like a lot of people making these arguments had these annoyances at the start of the movie, when it seemed more like the train was being portrayed as a viable solution, and then didn't reconsider them in the light of everything that's revealed about it throughout the rest of the film. Z. Autobahn fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Jan 12, 2015 |
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Jan 12, 2015 00:51
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Harold Krell posted:There were more things wrong with this movie other than the premise of the last of humanity living on a train. None of the characters really had any depth and were only used to prove points that really didn't make any sense. So his sacrifice from the perspective of a character arc didn't matter because he died shortly after? What about every character arc in fiction about, say, a selfish character who sacrifices their life for a greater good? The whole point of a character arc is that it matters in terms of relevance to the character, not the broader story. Harold Krell posted:Also, on the topic of science explaining stuff, that polar bear didn't just manifest out of nowhere. This implies that life had always existed outside the train and no one except one person in over a decade was smart enough to figure this out. This is a dumb movie. Or that they've been indoctrinated for more than a decade by an aggressive propaganda machine for which a key component was maintaining the belief that life didn't exist outside the train? I mean, do you think your average North Korean citizen is dumb for not knowing how things really are outside his country? The whole point is that the train is an inherently broken, unsustainable, terrible thing for humanity, and predicated on systemic lies and propaganda. That's the function of the polar bear: if it exists, then other life exists, rendering the 'point' of the train a lie.
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Jan 12, 2015 01:35
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Harold Krell posted:The most Curtis ever learns is that the train is bad, which the movie constantly reminds us each time it gets. The only reason he changes his mind from ruling the train to leaving it was because children were forced to toil for it (because the train is bad, you see). His death is never really portayed as an intentional sacrifice since the derailment could've end up sparing or killing them all anyways. Curtis goes from believing the problem is with the train's leadership to understanding that the problem is the train itself. In both literal and allegorical terms, this is a huge leap, the difference between thinking the solution to America's problems is to elect a Democrat or understanding the massive institutional flaws that transcend the specific person at the top. The film explicitly establishes losing an arm as represenative of self-sacrifice, which is why it's so important that Curtis has not done it; ultimately, he wants to lead, to be in charge, to run the system, and to do that, he'll need two arms (a statement Gilliam directly endorses). Only at the end, when he realizes the problem is the system itself and not the man at the head of the system doe she lose the selfishness 'keeping' his arm and make the necessary sacrifice. Harold Krell posted:The movie loses a lot of nuance by having predictable and flat characters. The people in the back of the train are crude, yet have an innocent beauty to them like how that one guy draws pictures of things, yet I can't think of anyone in the front of the train that we're really supposed to sympathize with. Even wise people like Gilliam lament that life in the world outside the train is gone. The guy that did find out there was life outside the train found out by simply looking out the window. Why did no one else notice? Are we to assume that after years of observation, no one else thought life outside the train was a possibility? So the bulk of the people who have the most to gain from observing the landscape and proving there is life outside (the back of the train) are deliberately kept in windowless quarters unable to look outside (likely for this exact reason). That means the only people who could determine there was life outside were the front of the trainers, who lived in opulence and had nothing to gain from this. More importantly, it's not like the guy just looked out the window and saw a bear; he guessed there was life by using a persistent analytical method (looking at the same landmark year after year) and even his system was unreliable and distrusted.
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Jan 12, 2015 06:00
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Harold Krell posted:But nearly everyone in the world ended up dying because of his sacrifice. What's the point of resetting the system if there's no one to support? Yes. That is the question the film asks: if the only options are between surviving in a monstrously unjust society or tearing it down through violent revolution with many innocent casualties, which do you choose? This isn't some far-fetched, implausible conondrum either, it's a very real one that has come up many times in human history. I feel like you're taking the movie way too literally. Harold Krell posted:It's still far-fetched to assume that after all the years of being on that train that only one person noticed what was happening in the world outside. I'm pretty sure there were at least a few engineers and scientists on board who would be able to deduce this. We were shown exactly zero scientists or engineers. Why would you presume there were any on board? Harold Krell posted:I'm not saying Snowpiercer is dumb because I just don't like and am dismissing it as stupid, but because it simply isn't a very smart movie. The movie is rife with long scenes of exposition, it constantly needs to remind the audience that the train is not a good thing in the most hamhanded ways possible ("babies taste the best", food bars made from bugs, child labor used to power the train, etc.), and aside from some broad strokes about class struggle, the movie never goes into anything else with much thought. No one in the front of the train has any redeeming qualities, people chosen from the back of the train to be in the front of the train are just brainwashed somehow into doing their new roles, and the only cars in the train we see aside from the back are ones dedicated to decadence, praising Wilford, or keeping the back of the train in line through violence. Two things. First, most of your complaints are that the movie isn't subtle. Subtle isn't the same thing as smart. Many smart works are subtle, sure, but there are also many great works of fiction, art, cinema that are not subtle in the least but are still smart and impactful. This is especially true in the area of allegory and satire. Animal Farm isn't subtle in the least, but that doesn't make it not smart. Second, you keep saying the movie isn't saying much, but then in the same breath stumbling over the philosophical questions it raises. While most dystopian society films posit a fixable society (i.e. a bunker with bad leadership), the entire point of Snowpiercer is creating a state that cannot be salvaged from within, whose very existence necessitates injustice, and then challenging the viewer between the moral conundrum of destroying it (at massive cost of life and a deeply uncertain future) or accepting it and the ensuing injustice. Literally the complaints you're bringing up about the ending are the movie's intelligent point, and one that few dystopian films are willing to address. Harold Krell posted:People say that there's this allegory about the train being some type of "unfixable system" that needs to be done away with, which I guess happens with it derailing and all. But in the end, there isn't even a system anymore, most of these people's lives aren't made better because of this since they're all dead, and this is all suppose to be a positive ending because two random children survive and life will go on. I feel like you're overly hung up on this 'positive ending'. It's not a positive ending, like we're dancing the yub yub in the Ewok village. It's a very dark, heavily ambiguous ending with a single hint of a positive note, that maybe from all this chaos and death, life might have a shot at surviving. This is not meant to be a happy 'walk out with a smile' ending. It's intentionally down and destabilizing, especially given that the front of half the movie establishes it as a very convention 'rebels against evil oppressors' story. Harold Krell posted:But wasn't there another kid that went to the front of the train at the same time as Timmy? What makes Timmy more eligible to survive in the world than that kid? It's not like Curtis willfully chose Timmy and let the other kid die. As in most revolution, the deaths of the innocents was not an intentional goal of the revolutionaries, but a byproduct of violent change.
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Jan 13, 2015 23:39
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