I went into this film really wanting to like it. It is a fairly original idea, based on the 1982 French graphic novel Le Transperseneige and I was reading and hearing nothing but good things about it. And it is good, just not great. After reading the graphic novel, I could see the potential of a great story, and try as they might, they just couldn't pull it off. And that's too bad, because this one could have been one of the great ones.
Snowpiercer starts off in a post-apocalyptic world. The world has been plunged into a non-stop winter. In the novel, it is after a nuclear war, but in an effort to make it more "topical," I guess, it's now because of the unintended effects of an effort to stop global warming. In any case, the rest of humanity is riding on a 1000-car train that never stops. Of course, to make the symbolism even more obviously dumb, they are broken into 1st class, economy and overpacked cattle cars. The evil, white overseers are cruel to the people in steerage, for lack of a better term, with expected harsh and undeserved punishments meted out pretty arbitrarily. The conditions in steerage are also deplorable, with no way of advancing out. Because of this, a popular uprising takes place, and for the rest of the movie, we journey up the train on an ever-increasingly surreal trip of blood and cruelty.
So where does the movie go wrong? I think a few ways. One, we don't really care about anyone. We don't know any of the backstories of anyone who dies. All we see is the horrible living conditions and the deplorable state of affairs they are subjected to. When the revolt starts, we are curiously detached from the events happening. We don't care about the people, so we have no stake in the fight. It's like reading an encyclopedia account of a world event. Only once a person dies do we understand the motivations, and each one is pretty powerful. If we had known this before, we would care about their passing and would have an emotional stake in their well-being. Second, I am beginning to get a little tired of the hackneyed plot device that the only bad people in the world are white, European descent and they hold the keys to the machinations of the world. This film is no exception. With the exception of the leader of the revolt, Chris Evans, every white person is horrible and untrustworthy, and the richer they get, the more depraved they are. This simplistic view of the world is childish and starting to get old. There are good and bad people everywhere, but films like this keep pushing a tired stereotype that the world is run by 10 or 20 rich Jewish men in a smoky back room of a bank somewhere. They are the puppet masters of this world and don't care about anything but wealth. This type of childish thinking is what makes it easy to dehumanize a person or race and paint them as the enemy. This is regressive thinking and not particularly conducive to forward progress for history. I'm sorry to get so political here, but movies like Snowpiercer are trying to promote this backward thinking and are trying to make a political point. The only reason I rate this movie so high is that there is a great twist at the end. It is also very beautifully shot. There are scenes of horrible beauty. But in the end, I find kind of insulting. It is not the only film to put forth this world view, but this is just one of the most recent examples. I would recommend it because it is well-made, but it is simplistic and hackneyed, and assumes that we, the viewers are just as dumb and small-minded as the filmmakers themselves.
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