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Status: Slight Depression
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█ So I watched Snowpiercer today, a bit by accident really; someone else was watching so I decided to give it a watch as well (missed the beginning of it, but I don't think I missed anything to particularly vital to the 'plot'. I titled this journal "Left vs Right" for a variety of reasons, but the one for me is the left and right side of the brain. The left side of the brain is the more logical side of the brain, and the right side of the brain is considered to be the creative side. This movie is for the right side of the brain, the creative side. Which is to say that if logic is hugely important to you, this movie was probably a horrible experience for you. I'm a person who values logic a bit more than creativity, and this is expressed a lot through my art. Certainly my works have quite the margin required for suspension of disbelief, but it still follows it's own set of rules; but they're my rules, and people may not enjoy those. There's certainly ideas I'd explore more if I was more willing to let go of my logic, but me adhering to those rules doesn't mean I don't appreciate those who do go past where I'm comfortable with them. Likewise with this movie, even though I don't like the leaps of logic (or gaps of logic) in the Snowpiercer, I can appreciate the reasons for which it was done.

█ At this point, SPOILER WARNING! Normally I wouldn't really care about a spoiler warning because knowing the plot is generally unimportant to the enjoyment of a movie, but the spoilers here is more about the message you receive if you know certain things going in. It is to say... to have this movie spoiled means you will lose out on that epiphany moment. That the second time you watch a movie (or reflect upon it) you see that movie differently, you see things with a different eye. Granted, you might be a person who sees with different eyes to start with; which I sorta did, but still I think if I had the movie spoiled going in I think I would have ended up being really distracted looking for things while watching it. So yeah, you've been warned; read no further if you want to see a rather... surreal movie.

█ Now this movie was released in the summer of last year, so it's been floating around a bit, and two main criticisms with the movie: The first is are the large-plot holes and logical gaps required for the movie to 'function', that calling the movie 'artsy' is just a weak excuse for the movies logical flaws. This is where the logical left side of the brain prevails. Modern movies these days have been stuck in 'hyper realism' for sometime, and has been bleeding into every kind of genre of movie. Take Star Wars, where the "Force" was just that; a word. You could just say 'magic' and it would be just as appropriate, but then realism got pushed into the picture, because the "Force" just has to be explained and so now it's mitochloridebleach in a vain attempt to replace 'magic' with 'science'. It does nothing for the movie, nothing is explained and at the same time you can't help but feel it's wrong.

Snowpiercer follows this theme very closely, and hell could be one of the underlying layers if the film itself. I suppose I can start talking about the premise and plot of the movie now. The gist of it is that the Earth froze over and is a barren frozen lifeless wasteland. The surviving members of humanity all survive and live on a train, and have been on this train for almost two decades. We are introduced to some of the passengers of this train, people who exist in the back of the train in windowless cars. It's dirty, grimy, overcrowded, an unpleasant place to be in. The only food comes in the form of 'protein bars', which one assumes doesn't taste that good; but hey, food is food. People are are alive, surviving, but it's pretty much a prison, and they want out. In terms of logic things are okay, suspension of disbelief is fine. How things are taken care of is because they are on a 'super train.'

Now questions start to arise when you realize that this train has not stopped in nearly 20 years. Questions of what about damage, repairs, maintenance. Questions about the state of the track itself. The energy requirements of this perpetual motion machine. Where does the food come from? Where does the water come from? Some of these questions are addressed, but others are not. At first the answers are acceptable, but as the movie goes on, the more and more the answers are less acceptable. In fact the more answers one demands of the movie's logic, premise, and even ultimate goal and destination, the more the movie unravels; and is finally derailed. It is where the movie dies. Incidentally it is also where everyone dies as well. The end of the movie is where logic and rules stops, and where one's imagination has to take over. Even if the extent of the imagination is that the two survivors of the train wreck is they'll either freeze to death or be eaten by polar bears. Through the course of the movie logic is gradually and slowly being replaced by insanity. The beginning of the movie has sound logic: It's deadly cold outside, the train is warm, logical for people to be on this train. The end of the movie is almost nothing but pure insanity, and one of the characters even says "We're all a little insane, you have to be to live on this train." It's the movie's not so subtle hint at how this movie flows: From logic to madness. Yet for people who complain how blunt and to the face at how Snowpiercer is, and that it is in no way a thoughtful subtle movie, I think very few people caught this aspect of the movie. Course they can claim that the movie is just being lazy about it's logic, and that my explanation is an 'artsy' weak lame excuse. The train continually moves from the left to the right. It's also how progress and time bars progress. Left to right. From logic to creativity/insanity/madness. There's even notable steps in the logic by the types of train cars they move through. Take the 'food carts' as the easy example: The first food cart is that the protein bars are created from ground up insects. It's logical, insects are high in protein, require minimal resources to produce. The second food cart is the greenhouse, where fruits are being grown; reasonable enough to keep plants there no explanation needed really. The third food cart is the aquarium, which is stretching logic a bit; but it is explained that they are only harvested from twice a year, and that it's the rate where the environment is sustainable. It's ridiculous, but it's there; with a reasonable enough explanation. The final food cart is passed over wordlessly: A frozen meat cart. Not just small things like birds mind you, but the ribs of something large like a cow being hung from the ceiling. Logically this cart should not exist, yet how does one explain insanity? I certainly think that the steady disregard for the train's logic was deliberate, as opposed to lazy. It is the price being paid for turning the 'Force' into mitowhatevers: you will be thrown out of the suspension of disbelief.

The second main complaint about Snowpiercer is it's commentary about society and class. How it's rich vs poor. How it's just another thing about the lazy dirty poor rising up and fighting the hard working rich. Certainly it's there, but I wouldn't consider it commentary; I think it's an observation of it. It's basically saying "I'm just stating the facts." there's no judgement involved. Course here is where one leaves themselves open to evisceration about how all the rich people are just caricatures and stereotypes of rich people. Or how it's just lazy writing yet again because it's rich people being evil because they're rich. What people who make this particular complaint miss is that the rich people on this train don't do any of the fighting: It's the middle class. Most of the fighting is done in the middle cars, where the middle class is represented. After the soldiers of the rich have been defeated the rich passengers of this train simply look on. They hide from the sight of the lower class marching through their train cars. In the end all the fighting and killing was done between the poor and the middle class. Though why would that happen? It's supposed to be the rich vs everyone else right? The movie touches on the why, where the children and the adults give themselves over to the train they are on and it's conductor at the front of the train; completely and absolutely, without question; and why not? The train does protect them from the outside, where it's a frozen wasteland and people would die rather quickly. They have no reason to change things, and odds are if they did it would mean certain death for them. In the end, what this movie is presenting is that everyone is a passenger and a prisoner of the class system; even the conductor at the front of the train. These last parts are extremely up front and blunt that it's hard for people to miss it; yet people only care that they see poor vs rich. Sure they will say "yeah I see the point, but this isn't art, it's not subtle about it." A head scratcher for sure, to have people to say that something is not subtle yet completely miss the message, even if the message is "everyone dies."

Oh I suppose that might be the third complaint: The ending, which is tied a bit to the logic of the movie itself. Basically the ending is the train derails and everyone dies except for two people. There's almost no logic to the ending, as I noted, Snowpiercer throws out logic more and more as it progress nearer and nearer to the ending. Instead of logic, more and more symbolism is inserted instead; and there's a lot of it. The easier ones to note is how the adults throw themselves around the children before the crash: To protect the future. The children, who have live entirely inside the train, setting foot for the first time out into the world: being born. Them seeing life in a lifeless world in the form of a polar bear: Hope. If you only apply logic to the ending (as most people would do) then there's only one conclusion to draw: They're going to freeze to death and be eaten by that polar bear.

There's only one more thing I want to touch on on this movie (I'm sure I could go on for much longer, heck I've gone on a bout it a lot already) and it's the notion of how the protagonist has to move from the left (back) of the train to the right (front) of the train. To the front is his perceived redemption, his escape from the hellish existence that is the back of the train. His quest, his mission, is goal. It's a simple concept, to progress he must move right; if he moves left he is regressing and moving away from what he perceives is what he wants. This is one of the subtle things about the movie (subtle for me anyways), but it's important to take note of when he has to look back, and when he chooses to move back; as well as what he leaves behind as well. Some of things he leaves behind are his friends and his own humanity. The further he gets to front of the train, the more he looses. Near the front of the train he has lost nearly everything and can no longer go back, there's nothing left for him to go back to. Instead he is given the choice to forward or to the side of the train: Outside of the train, where he will freeze to death; at least that's what he's convinced of, but he is asked "What if we can survive?" Though it's an easy choice for the protagonist as he's not suicidal, and he's not going to abandon his goal when he's so close to it. Yet even when he confronts the conductor at the front of the train he finds himself being pushed further and further to the right and forward, till he literally cannot. He is at the front of the train, he perhaps is the front of the train; which is what the conductor has done anyways, relinquishing his position to him. To hold all that remains of humanity in his hands. When he looks back here, he sees the chaos that humanity has descended to; the people fighting and killing each other. He has the power to decide the fate of everyone on this train, and he decides that whatever the train is; it's not what he wants. So he saves the children and derails the train; discarding the uncertain past in favor of the uncertain future.

Though certainly there's a number of ways to view the ending. One of the ways I look at is that people will allow their sense of morality and emotions to overcome one's better judgement. The protagonist adamantly and vehemently rejected leaving the train as it was certain death, yet when given the truth of the world he lived in; he decided that his morals would trump his better sense of judgement which in the end kills everyone on the train. That his regret over a bad moral choice in the past also provoked him into making the choice of "The need of the one outweighs the needs of the many." Basically in the end the protagonist abandons logic in favor of emotional reasons, much in how the movie abandons logic in favor of symbolism. How much was his redemption worth to him? The lives of everyone else on the train. Though can it be considered redemption at that point?

█ In the end I found Snowpiercer to be very thought provoking, more so than any other movie I've seen in a long while. There's layers upon layers to peel away from the experience if one so chooses. Yes there's a lot of blunt pieces of symbolism and messages, but that's just the low hanging fruit so to speak. You can scratch past that and find more and more. It's not a movie that questions the nature of reality like Inception or The Matrix, but rather questions the nature of choice, logic, and symbolism. If you watched this movie then you might ask the question "What's up with the fish being cut slowly with an axe? What's that supposed to symbolize? To show that blood is going to be spilled? That the axe is dangerous and sharp?" If I was to take a guess, I would say "It's when one uses symbolism when you're not supposed to: you're just being pretentious." because what happens with that fish? The protagonist steps on it later in the middle of the fight scene and slips and falls. That fish literally served no purpose but the cause the protagonist to slip and fall.

I think I'd recommend this movie to anyone who wants to see something different from the usual fare of what's usually been offered in the past... next to forever really. If you're a fan of the hyper-realism movies that's been extremely prevalent in the past few years, you're going to hate this movie. If you're absolutely tired of the dark-gritty-hyper-real movies, this I think this movie might be akin to having a cold water thrown at your face: Shocking yet a bit refreshing, even if you end up feeling cold after.