After years of reading the description and thinking “that’s gonna be really stupid, nevermind,” I finally cave and watched Snowpiercer. Sure enough, really stupid. How is that film rated 94%???
Going out on a limb here: because it's
stupid.
Like... the world falls apart when you think about it for a hot minute, but that's not quite the point. It does enough to explain some of the main things you'd question (like food, energy) and kind of skirts the reality of actually doing any of this because riding a train forever around the world is
sooooo stupid.
Various cars in the train are so absurd they arguably shouldn't exist at all, much less when you consider that these rich folk are doing the rave thing
all the time because... they can, I guess? We simply aren't unpacking the day-to-day of the "wake up, eat, rave for 6 hours, eat again, rave some more" car or the strange ratio of sleeper cars to people because it's
stupid. It's a wildly stylized representation of class struggle by pulling virtually everything to an aesthetic extreme, but that's
amplified by the understanding that they're all on the exact same train. I know I don't have to explain the concept of class struggle in a film like this since it's kind of heavy handed but I do think it's important to recognize why there's no real nuance (and think that helps the film a little).
It paints in these broad brushes and creates these caricatures of real social elements because despite the premise, this is still basically just an action movie. It's Train to Busan but the zombies aren't turned. The class aspects are very heavy handed but at the end of the day this is just a "get to the other side of the train" movie for most of it and buoyed by the action scenes, so that all kind of tracks for me. There isn't much time to unpack anything with more detail because it'd be missing the point, you just have to connect dots.
You sit back and unpack it and of course train life doesn't add up, and the ending is like "well now what, everybody's just f***ed?" but that might be the point.
If this is a pointed analysis of humanity in the 21st century it's kind of admitting from the jump that the train has already left the station and we f***ed it all, which isn't pleasant but is certainly meaningful.
arstechnica.com
