>>2645>Snowpiercer<DON'T READ IF YOU DIDN'T WATCH YET
I am conflicted about it. If I was being perfectly honest, I'd probably even say it's bad, however it being leftypilled saves it somewhat at least. My big issue is that it sacrifices good plot for political / ideological analysis that is supposed to relate to the current day. I don't mind a film doing that, however I'd say it fucks up with the ideology as well. So I will go in to these separate problems in 2 paragraphs.
First is the movie if we take it at face value as a sci-fi story detached from our own cultural reality. Well, it's pretty shit and basically Divergent / Maze-Runner (or whatever the fuck it was called where they run away from a robo-maze into a post apocalypse scenario) sci-fi dystopia plot. Villains are comically evil, there is a random betrayal moment at the end that leads to nothing and the ending feels like shit, since right before it was established that the snow will pass, so it feels like the main character totally fucked up and killed everyone instead of waiting a year more. Oh and add in the stupid shit too like how the train structure is dysfunctional or the fucking glass shooting scene.
However, most of that can be forgiven, especially when you consider most of it is symbolism to reflect to the real world. However, and this can be just me, the ideology falls flat for me, especially since at first I thought it was actually going the right way. Basically it all comes together with the final confrontation with Elon Musk stand-in. Up to that point all we saw were a) scenes of total contrast in the train and b) a few lines about "keeping the balance". Musk explains his view for why things should be as they are. It is 1 to 1 Holism. (I think there are different definitions of what Holism is, but I am specifically referring to the one pioneered by Jan Smuts, an anglo imperialist governor of South Africa. He, abusing the theory of ecosystems, came up to the conclusion that viewing humanity as an eco-system there are ways of insuring that it maintains total stability, with the "stability" of course being the insured imperialist hegemony of Britain. Almost the same ideas where started being promoted in second half of 20th century for ecology, saying that austerity and degrowth need to be ensured to maintain the current system, aka capitalism, completely ignoring the possibility of the system itself restructuring). This is clearly the same situation in Snowpiercer. The underclasses need to suffer in order to maintain the eco-system of the train, while the upper-class lives in luxury as a "necessity" for provocation. Now all of this is pretty good and draws attention to a great evil in modern ecologist ideology, however after this exposition the main character drops the ball, or more importantly, the story does. It falls pray to the very ideology it tried to attack, as the main character concedes to Musk stand-in, that indeed this is the only way. The largest flaw of Holism, that there is another way if you dare to restructure and change society it self instead of maintaining status quo, is never revealed. Instead the film subscribes to idealist bullshit like pic related, doomerism that no longer has any faith in the future as it is, choosing instead to let everything burn, including yourself, only leaving behind tiny hope for the future instead of fighting for it yourself as hard as you can with what is offered, no longer do you try to change the world.
Also is it pure coincidence that the main character is called Curtis when the only other time I have ever saw Holism being called out was in an Adam Curtis doc?