Monday, July 7, 2014

Snowpiercer wants us to realize that perspective and having options are incredibly important in life

Sunday morning, I had the pleasure of watching the science fiction thriller Snowpiercer. I think as a film, it cements my feelings that Chris Evans is my new favorite actor. As a genre story, it fits firmly in what author L.G. Smith might call "dystopian fiction."

If you are a member of the Insecure Writer's Support Group, then you might have read L.G.'s article entitled "My Dystopian Dilemma." She writes that "According to many in the industry, dystopian is D.E.A.D." I don't know enough about what agents or publishers are looking for right now, but if "dystopian" truly is ebbing off, I think I won't miss these stories of people living in dreadful, miserable societies all that much.

Snowpiercer is truly a gripping tale. Sure, you have to swallow the possibility that to address climate change, mankind induced a global Ice Age that killed off probably 90% of the organisms that lived on Earth (by accident of course). In addition, you have to swallow the idea that mankind's only means of surviving this apocalypse was to board a high-altitude train that makes one revolution around the Earth every year. It never stops. It never runs out of fuel. And it's big enough to contain thousands upon thousands of people in a perfectly balanced ecosystem.

And therein lies the problem. "Balance" is maintained by culling humans with insidious means. One way to achieve this much needed ecological balance is to deny a whole population a food source. Trapped in an iron box with nowhere to go, it's inevitable that the strong eventually eat the weak. Putting "undercover agents" in the population to convince them to revolt is another (so that those killed in the revolution drive down the population and open up an excuse for more killing to keep the population in check). And the creativeness of the oppressors and the oppressed is as imaginative as the population of survivors.

But perhaps what I found most engaging about the film is the actual metaphor of "The Train." I suppose it's a stand-in for the rat race. To get closer to the engine room is to improve your station and standard of living. It doesn't matter who you need to kill to get there. The fact is that removing a life from the train, makes room for a person where there was otherwise no room at all.

In a way, I think the director of Snowpiercer wants us all to realize that perspective and having options for escape are incredibly important in life. There are two Japanese characters in this film, and they have a kind of perspective that everyone else seems to lack. One goes so far as to be actually clairvoyant, able to see in her head what awaits on the other side of a locked gate to yet another train car. But they too are metaphorical stand-ins for the idea that even if we must all endure a rat race of sorts, that there is always the possibility of just leaving, of stepping outside and going somewhere else. Without this option (of course) we have no choice but to become monstrous and treat each other in the worst possible way.

Maybe the decline of dystopian fiction's popularity is a good thing, because it says that people are willing to embrace hope again as a society. It may mean that we all don't feel locked into something that we can't control and that we have options. And having options lies at the very core of freedom.

18 comments:

  1. I agree the hopelessness I won't miss. There is always hope.
    Still want to see this film! Where did you catch it?

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  2. Probably people will just go back to reading about vampires now. The whole train thing is one of those ideas that sounds really neat but at the same time really impractical.

    BTW, the title of my blog entry today is definitely Offuttesque.

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  3. I like Chris Evans too but that movie sounds so strange to me. I always have trouble with ideas like that where people would not question or just step off the damned train.
    Dystopian type stories have been around for a long, long time and I don't think they're going away. The YA industry was flooded with them so maybe that market is shrinking.

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  4. Snowpiercer is going on my list of films to see!

    I agree with Susan. Dystopian has been around a long time. I don't think it's dead, just overdone recently. Personally, I love it. But not for the hopelessness. I like the triumph over adversity. The human desire to live and succeed at all costs.

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  5. If dystopia is dead then why is Walking Dead so big? *comingdownofftheWalkingDeadmarathon*

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  6. @Alex: Snowpiercer is actually playing at the Broadway Center Theater in downtown Salt Lake City multiple times a day. The theater is only about a mile from my house. http://www.fandango.com/broadwaycentrecinemas_aaaze/theaterpage

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  7. "And having options lies at the very core of freedom."

    I've never really thought about this but now that I am I believe you're right. What's the point of freedom if there are no options to choose from?

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  8. See, I love dystopian fiction, because it's invariably a way of holding a mirror up to society and pointing out its perceived flaws. I like exploring that stuff, even if it gets bleak at times. And, yes, I do expect a lot of "I can't sell this right now" type reaction when I query, but what's new?

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  9. I didn't realize Chris Evans was in this. I suppose I should see it.
    Although I don't really understand the logic of the train.

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  10. I really like this directors other films (btw Korean not Japanese) but found this one a bit flat. The baby-eating backstory didn't seem to fit with how the society had evolved. Interesting ideas but a bit disjointed for me.

    mood

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  11. The whole post is informative but I like the last line of today's post. We all need to have hope and we need to let our children and grand children understand that there is always hope and choices of good and bad.

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  12. I didn't have much interest in seeing this film until I read your post. Now I'm greatly intrigued. I like dystopians, but it will be nice to see more stories with bigger rays of hope in them.

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  13. I discovered an aversion to dystopian stories. But that's just me. There's nothing wrong with those that enjoy that sort of thing (or those that write it).

    It's all cyclical. I like the idea that hope is cycling back. But it'll only last a little while until the hopelessness returns.

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  14. What a lovely, profound summary of the movie's message, Mike. If there's a ray of hope in the story, then I want to see it, and to me that is when dystopian literature can be very appealing -- witness the huge success of the Hunger Games trilogy. So when publishers say a certain genre is over, I don't trust them. Right now someone could be writing a dystopian novel that will become a massive bestseller.

    That said, I do believe that one reason Star Trek became immortal was because it had an optimistic vision of Earth's future.

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  15. Mike, I took something completely different away from the movie. It wasn't about the dystopia at all. That was completely incidental. There was no train. There were no boxcars. There was no baby eating. Nothing in that movie was "real". It was simply a vehicle (pun intended) to set up the philosophical questions about social structure, classes & castes, and the problems facing society. It should leave the watcher thinking about their own "station" in life, and their attitudes toward it.

    As you know now, "In Time" was not about vampires. This is the same kind of movie.

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  16. I adored the movie! The end was disappointing and too long, but the ideas given in the movie are so very up to date. Chris was truly amazing in his performance and so were the other actors too!
    Did you know that DEADLINE used pics from my spotlight on the film from last year to illustrate one of their posts :))))

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  17. I've been impressed with a couple of dystopian books, but I lost interest in reading others. Maybe you're right. I'd rather read about hope.

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  18. It's the most inventive science-fiction picture in years, the most original action film in a decade and perhaps the most all-around entertaining movie so far this year.

    Marlene
    Top rated Lake Clark Alaska Bear Viewing Tours website

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