Snowpiercer
So I went and saw Snowpiercer, because a) I was interested in it anyway and b) I was irritated by the whole "no entire movie for you, Americans!" thing. (If that was five-dimensional chess on Weinstein's part, well played, sir.)
I'm glad I saw it? I... liked... it? Liked it is a weird way to put it, but I did. There are a couple of bits that were hard to watch, but it was absorbing all the way through. I'd actually be interested now to hear what the desired cuts were; it's not short, and it can be discursive, but it didn't feel at all flabby to me, and I can't think of anything I wouldn't have missed.
So apparently "and then they were eaten by the polar bear!" is a popular interpretation of the ending, but my brain didn't go there at all. I totally thought that Ed Harris - who I always think of as John Glenn first, I saw The Right Stuff at way too impressionable an age - was eating Timmy during the previous scene, so, uh, it's not that I don't have the ability to think that way. My actual thought process was this:
1) Polar bear!
2) ...in the mountains? Aren't they in the mountains? Polar bears need ice. They eat sea mammals.
3) If the ecosystem is supporting polar bears it is totally survivable, see also the previously-mentioned Inuit.
4) These two kids are totally going to freeze to death, though. Where are their mittens?
5) Ha ha ha we thought we were going to make the polar bears extinct what with the global warming and all! IRONY.
Polar bears are just such a symbolic thing when discussing climate change that my brain went there, not to "enormous meat-eating animal."
Other thoughts:
-- Dude, I admire your dedication, but you're leaning awfully hard on the idea that that plane is being revealed by melting and not by, you know, wind.
-- The whole setup was obviously completely nonsensical in about twenty-two different ways, but it was also so clearly allegorical that after the first ten minutes or so I stopped having to consciously turn off my "but - but -" internal monologue.
-- I honestly do not get Curtis' horror at the bugs. I mean, okay, theoretically kind of gross, but really? YOU ATE BABY, CURTIS. ...oh God I just got why Curtis was so not into Edgar talking about the taste of steak.
-- Tilda Swinton was wonderful. Really everyone was great, though I would really like to go back and see the beginning again to watch Evans' performance. I'd seen some surprisingly good reviews, so I was watching and wasn't that impressed, but in retrospect I'd be interested to see how many of the spots where I thought he felt awkward were places where having seen the ending it's understandable that Curtis would have been awkward.
-- Seriously I spent most of that scene with Ed Harris with my hands over my mouth because I was so convinced Timmy was in the frying pan. I'd figured those kids had been culled since the sushi scene, though I really shouldn't have given the measuring thing.
-- The slide out from under what-these-folks-need-is-a-honky was very gracefully executed at the last possible moment. Kudos, Bong Joon-ho. (I mean, one would think that a Korean director would be less likely to succumb to that, and obviously Bong knew what he was doing with his casting choices there, but all the good intentions in the world could still have cast Curtis as The Hero at the end if he'd kept his status as protagonist.)
-- Speaking of, Song Kang-ho was great. WHY IS EVERYONE ELSE SO STUPID, he wonders. WHY.
-- Jamie Bell was perfectly good as Edgar but I really wish they'd cast someone younger. Going by Curtis' story at the end he's got to be a teenager still; granted hard living's going to age a guy, but on a Doylist level I wish I hadn't been distracted at the end by thinking that Edgar totally does not look like he's in his teens.
-- So basically it's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, except the people who walk away burn down Omelas on the way out? Fair enough, I guess. Keeping my head firmly in an allegorical space mostly kept me from thinking "uh, this is all very nice, but a whole bunch of innocent folks in the back of the train just died horribly," at least; by that point they weren't real anymore, if you know what I mean. I'm impressed that the movie managed to keep that balance, which is a tough thing to do, with me.
So anyway, I thought it was worth seeing. There are definitely some grim bits and it's definitely allegorical almost to the point of didacticism, but I also found it engaging on a story level, often exciting, and genuinely funny at times. The master class in WTF faces in the middle section was particularly entertaining.
I'm glad I saw it? I... liked... it? Liked it is a weird way to put it, but I did. There are a couple of bits that were hard to watch, but it was absorbing all the way through. I'd actually be interested now to hear what the desired cuts were; it's not short, and it can be discursive, but it didn't feel at all flabby to me, and I can't think of anything I wouldn't have missed.
So apparently "and then they were eaten by the polar bear!" is a popular interpretation of the ending, but my brain didn't go there at all. I totally thought that Ed Harris - who I always think of as John Glenn first, I saw The Right Stuff at way too impressionable an age - was eating Timmy during the previous scene, so, uh, it's not that I don't have the ability to think that way. My actual thought process was this:
1) Polar bear!
2) ...in the mountains? Aren't they in the mountains? Polar bears need ice. They eat sea mammals.
3) If the ecosystem is supporting polar bears it is totally survivable, see also the previously-mentioned Inuit.
4) These two kids are totally going to freeze to death, though. Where are their mittens?
5) Ha ha ha we thought we were going to make the polar bears extinct what with the global warming and all! IRONY.
Polar bears are just such a symbolic thing when discussing climate change that my brain went there, not to "enormous meat-eating animal."
Other thoughts:
-- Dude, I admire your dedication, but you're leaning awfully hard on the idea that that plane is being revealed by melting and not by, you know, wind.
-- The whole setup was obviously completely nonsensical in about twenty-two different ways, but it was also so clearly allegorical that after the first ten minutes or so I stopped having to consciously turn off my "but - but -" internal monologue.
-- I honestly do not get Curtis' horror at the bugs. I mean, okay, theoretically kind of gross, but really? YOU ATE BABY, CURTIS. ...oh God I just got why Curtis was so not into Edgar talking about the taste of steak.
-- Tilda Swinton was wonderful. Really everyone was great, though I would really like to go back and see the beginning again to watch Evans' performance. I'd seen some surprisingly good reviews, so I was watching and wasn't that impressed, but in retrospect I'd be interested to see how many of the spots where I thought he felt awkward were places where having seen the ending it's understandable that Curtis would have been awkward.
-- Seriously I spent most of that scene with Ed Harris with my hands over my mouth because I was so convinced Timmy was in the frying pan. I'd figured those kids had been culled since the sushi scene, though I really shouldn't have given the measuring thing.
-- The slide out from under what-these-folks-need-is-a-honky was very gracefully executed at the last possible moment. Kudos, Bong Joon-ho. (I mean, one would think that a Korean director would be less likely to succumb to that, and obviously Bong knew what he was doing with his casting choices there, but all the good intentions in the world could still have cast Curtis as The Hero at the end if he'd kept his status as protagonist.)
-- Speaking of, Song Kang-ho was great. WHY IS EVERYONE ELSE SO STUPID, he wonders. WHY.
-- Jamie Bell was perfectly good as Edgar but I really wish they'd cast someone younger. Going by Curtis' story at the end he's got to be a teenager still; granted hard living's going to age a guy, but on a Doylist level I wish I hadn't been distracted at the end by thinking that Edgar totally does not look like he's in his teens.
-- So basically it's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, except the people who walk away burn down Omelas on the way out? Fair enough, I guess. Keeping my head firmly in an allegorical space mostly kept me from thinking "uh, this is all very nice, but a whole bunch of innocent folks in the back of the train just died horribly," at least; by that point they weren't real anymore, if you know what I mean. I'm impressed that the movie managed to keep that balance, which is a tough thing to do, with me.
So anyway, I thought it was worth seeing. There are definitely some grim bits and it's definitely allegorical almost to the point of didacticism, but I also found it engaging on a story level, often exciting, and genuinely funny at times. The master class in WTF faces in the middle section was particularly entertaining.