SNOWPIERCER (2013)

SNOWPIERCER. Joon-ho Bong, dir., screen-story, script, with Kelly Masterson, based on the graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, and Jean-Marc Rochette.. Stefan Kovacik, prod. design. South Korea, USA, France, Czech Republic: SnowPiercer et al. (prod.) / The Weinstein Company (US dist.), 2013/14. See IMDb for details on [production and distribution].

SUPERTRAIN (1979), put into The Ship of Fools tradition best seen relatively recently (on a highly mechanized ship) in James Cameron's TITANIC (1997), set in an implausibly sterile world after a man-made, apparently world-wide great Ice Age. See for a large range of images of containment within a complex mechanism — the train — from close confinement amidst squalor to great luxury. Note especially the transit of the train's wraparound aquarium: the image shows people inside a kind of fish-tube with beautiful fish and at least one ray, itself inside the mechanism of the train. The engine/power-plant becomes a kind of mechanical and atomic god, in which a child is confined in a horrific variation on the theme of Charlie in The Machine in MODERN TIMES (1936). NOTE: There are reports of a controversy between the director and US distributor on length and pacing (and tone?) of the film; on a small screen at least — it's a psycho-mechanical-optics thing — SNOWPIERCER may indeed be too long and slightly off in pacing; so this is one often-claustrophobic film viewers should watch close to a video screen, or definitely try to see in a theater.

ALSO NOTE: The comparisons with MODERN TIMES and TITANIC go deep; SNOWPIERCER should be studied carefully for cinematic handling of issues of class intersecting with essentially Modern and mechanical technology.

5. DRAMA, RDE, 05/VII/14