The only human survivors of a snowball Earth are on a perpetually-traveling train. Why? I don’t know. The train supposedly runs on perpetual motion(!), except where slave labor somehow is more energy-efficient than machinery. They get food and other supplies from who knows where. In the narrow confines of the train, a caste system has been set up, segregating absolute poverty and decadent luxury. The rebelling underclass hero decides that it’s better to nihilistically destroy the train and possibly doom the human race to extinction rather than suffer the status quo.
The only way this makes any sense is that the setting is merely a surrealistic backdrop to a fable about class struggle. As science fiction, it’s retarded.
That’s why I’m not thinking of this is science-fiction. I’m thinking of it is a really fun movie with lots of action, which is why I’m excited to see it.
As science fiction, it’s part of a long history of dystopias and clearly owes a debt to Christopher Priest’s excellent The Inverted World., which won a British SF Award and was nominated for a Hugo.
It will all depend on the execution. If it’s like The Inverted World, I’d go. If it’s a lot of slam-bang action, I’ll pass.
I’ve seen it. It’s probably somewhere between Brazil, Delicatessen, and The Seven Samurai. Not sci-fi; it’s an allegory with the smallest of sci-fi framing around it.
I meant in terms of style and content, not quality.
Though to be honest, I think it’s probably a better film than Delicatessen. That Delicatessen has a 7.8 rating on IMDB just makes me think that it’s gained some points by virtue of having been released before the internet existed and people tend not to go back and rate films they saw years ago, unless they were super-enthusiastic about it.
I’d probably rate Delicatessen around 6.3, Snowpiercer around 6.7, Brazil I didn’t like so I’ll assume I’m missing something and skip it, and Seven Samurai is an 8.8. Citizen Kane is also like an 8.8.
OK, so if it’s just supposed to be a story about generic class struggle… Why put in the nonsensical elements? Couldn’t one tell the same story in a stationary city, with a central power plant in place of The Engine?
So, the central conceit did not bother you? Class warfare aboard a perpetually moving mega-train? I can see the pitch: “Like Elysium, but on a train! Just as nonsensical and twice as heavy-handed!” As Lumpy indicated, it creates a confined space where it becomes impossible to ignore implausibilities and inconsistencies.
It certainly looks like the exaggerated class divisions of Elysium (including Swinton in the Foster role) crossed with a bit of the nihilism of Runaway Train.
There’s a long and honorable tradition of writing about class struggle under the thin veil of science fiction, just so that badguy-analogues and goodguy-analogues alike can read it and absorb the ideas without taking it personally.
I mean, nobody read The Time Machine for the first time and thought “holy shit I’m a Morlock/Eloi.” I hope.
Delicatessen is a timeless fantasy film that created its own surreal universe. Like Brazil, it was not bound by conventional expectations of how things work in the world, since it is clear from the get-go that it is not the same reality. It deserves an honorable mention in the annals of film history for its courageous cinematography and art direction at least.
Both *Brazil *and Delicatessen are fantastical black comedies and do not have much in common with The Seven Samurai which is a more traditional adventure drama. Are you suggesting that Snowpiercer is intentionally funny as a comedy?
I don’t think the allegory matches the real world at all. But the struggles presented in (for example) Les Miserables also don’t match the modern day real world, either, yet I’m still able to appreciate its story. In either case, it comes down to, “if this really was the situation, then this is what would happen and why these characters’ actions are notable.” I tend to care more about whether the message is good/bad than whether the message is relevant to any real world.
Yeah, but it didn’t have a budget to do much and was the director’s first real film. The City of Lost Children shares all of those aspects, had a larger world, better acting, directing, cinematography, and a story that was fitting a film, rather than a playhouse.
It has some parts that are in a similar style of wacky horrible as Jeunet’s films, with similar drunken cinematography, and an inherently horrible universe like Delicatessen or Seven Samurai. But the whole thing is presented as a simplistic allegory, like Brazil.
We went to buy tickets to see it but they only had ONE ticket left, dammit! There were only two screenings (it was a film festival) but selling out two largish screens means that I think it’ll be back to one of our arthouse cinemas sometime soon. Hope so.
And I have a fairly broad definition of sf, so this fits in that category quite easily for me… I believe there are a couple of graphic novels due, but I’ve not seen them.
All I have learned from all the dystopian movies I have seen is that, it is the rich that hold society together. If they all head off somewhere and leave the rest of us behind we immediately become barbaric, violent, mindless savages. Seems we can’t get by without our wealthy overlords.
As a data analyst I think that is a really interesting point. I wonder if there is some way to evaluate how people do “go back” on IMDB. Personally if I see anything I check all the major cast and crew to review anything of theirs I have seen whether I like it or not. Whenever I come across an actor’s name I check that I have reviewed all their movies that I have seen.
It’s based on a French graphic novel/comic, so I guess it’s more about SNCF. A bunch of people moan about their place in life, while a train goes nowhere, very French.
