A Cold Future
expert and Tilda Swinton, all-in, loony-bin brilliant as a fanatical mouthpiece for the ruling class — and all the actors have screen presences forceful enough to round out frugal characterizations that, by design, have but a single goal. The revolutionaries’ mission? To seize the engine, manned by the train’s designer and godhead Wilford. As Curtis and his ragged band of insurgents set off to meet the wizard (and ideally slit his throat), the story advances with a video-game-like plotting, each railcar representing a new level with a new challenge. Bong and Masterson subtly contour the film with religious iconography — in the bitter irony of its stepinto-the-light trajectory (the benighted rebels are blinded the train reside the pampered first-class passengers, while by sunlight when they reach the more affluent railcars); in the very back, the poor are penned in like cattle and the emphasis on the train’s powerhouse as the “sacred plundered like a junkyard whenever first-class is in want engine”; an intriguing allusion to transubstantiation; and of a classical violinist or sous-chef. mirroring versions of a supplicant-and-divine-leader rePrimed for rebellion, the steerage class lationship, between Swinton’s Mason with rallies around a reluctant leader named the enigmatic Wilford (Ed Harris), and SNOWPIERCER Curtis. He’s played by Chris Evans, who Curtis with his steerage-class sensei Gilliam Rated R flexes some of the same muscles (deltoid, (John Hurt). Directed by Bong Joon-ho jaw) as in his day job as Captain America, But Snowpiercer holds its own; it’s an unStarring Chris Evans, Tilda Swinbut subverts the uncomplicated action ruly but rattling — and ravishing — work of ton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer heroics of the Marvel movie cycle for a art. On first watch, I wondered if there was At Magic Lantern much grimmer meditation on heroism anything to scratch beneath the surface — it here. Bong’s confidence in his leading man seemed so straightforward, I worried there to carry the third act — which includes a crucial tightwasn’t enough there — so I re-watched it almost right framed, unbroken monologue — is rewarded by the best away and was surprised to find it still left me panting. work of Evans’ career. Then again, shake a snow globe, and there’s no telling Bong has cast his film exceptionally well – including where its disparate parts will settle. I can’t wait to watch Bong regular Song Kang-ho as a drug-addled securities it again, to see where it settles next.
Snowpiercer’s speeding train makes for one of the best sci-fi flicks of the year BY KIMBERLEY JONES
A
n object of blunt force and breath-catching beauty, Snowpiercer plays what-if with a familiar doomsday scenario: What if Noah’s ark never found dry land again? Would the animals turn on each other? In this English-language debut from acclaimed South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Mother), set in 2031, some 17 years after a failed experiment to counteract global warming initiated a catastrophic new ice age, a train powered by a perpetual-motion engine crosses the world on a continuous track. Humanity is now extinct, save the couple of thousand souls aboard the titular train, a fixed ecosystem with finite resources — although “soul” is a loaded word to use to describe a population reduced to its most basic, and base, instincts. Working from the French source graphic novel Le Transperceneige, Bong and his co-writer Kelly Masterson (Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead) use the train’s topdown layout to dramatize the class divide. At the front of
46 INLANDER JULY 10, 2014