At long last , the acclaimed post - apocalyptic film Snowpiercer is coming to select U.S. theaters this weekend . We were golden enough to sit down with director Bong Joon - ho for an exclusive interview , and he unknot the movie ’s themes and the reasons for its unparalleled visual style .
raider before …
mention : We talked to Bong Joon - ho through an spokesperson .
Snowpiercer , based on theFrench lifelike novel , aim position after a new Ice Age has overtaken the domain . The only survivors of human beings are on board a massive railroad train that ’s a whole self - stop environment , constantly in question around the world . And this extremely stratify society is fantastically oppressive for the hoi polloi in the tail part , admit Curtis ( Chris Evans ) who diagram with Gilliam ( John Hurt ) to lift up and take over the train from the oppressors , played by Tilda Swinton and Ed Harris among others . To this end , they bust out a drug - addicted locksmith named Nam ( Song Kang - ho ) and his girl .
https://gizmodo.com/the-original-snowpiercer-comic-is-dystopian-scifi-at-i-1507420694
Why the wildness in the film looks so stylized and insane
Snowpiercer has a set of violence in it , but it ’s there to reinforce the notion of a tight , claustrophobic blank space where people are push as well as stepping on each other , say Bong . He thought of this as being a more archaic type of ferocity .
With the “ narrow , long and straight ” structure of the surroundings on the train , with some people trying to go onward and other people trying to block them from going ahead , “ it ’s inevitable that there will be headway - to - straits hit , ” says Bong . “ It ’s inescapable . ”
He feel that this would lead to a “ very active energy , ” and everything would be “ very physical , ” and “ the violence would be very volatile and close - range . ” He tried to fight the limits , specially in the film ’s ax - battle and the big battle in the sauna section . “ There are no optical maser triggerman , it ’s just body to torso , with axis . ”
A lot of the motion picture ’s visual style is aimed at express the futility of Curtis ’ journey
The motion picture plays a fortune with Inner Light and darkness , with the shining landscape outside slowly being break to the characters as they travel forrard to the part of the train that has more windows .
I asked Bong what this tardily encroaching igniter symbolizes to him , and he respond that the whole plastic film is about Curtis ’ journey , and a lot of the visuals in the celluloid are meant to convey that Curtis ( Chris Evans ) is physically moving forward to the front of the train — but his heart is stuck in the rear of the train , as he ’s trammel in his memories of thing that happened 17 year ago .
And without getting too deep into spoiler dominion , Bong says the film is about Curtis traveling from one father figure to another : from John Hurt to Ed Harris . But in the remainder , this journey is n’t what it appear to be , and “ going from the dour tail incision to the tripping front section is yet another wheel , ” say Bong . “ When the destruction and the front are linked , it establish yet another frustration for the fibre . ”
Bong took almost nothing from the graphic novel
The world of the Snowpiercer comic is very different than Bong ’s movie — in the comic , there ’s a whole political ecesis , including a President and military leadership , and a complex society , and none of this is in the picture . The comedian also includes the reverence of disease spread from the impoverished ass of the train to the front . And it ’s revealed betimes in the comic that the train ’s engine is start to slacken down , meaning all the passenger are likely doomed unless something drastic is done .
Bong says he took almost nothing from the graphical novel , apart from the “ fundamental melodic theme ” of the survivors of a stock-still apocalypse surviving aboard a caravan . “ Everything else had to be changed , and that was the approach from the very rootage , ” tell Bong . He did n’t pick and choose which elements to keep from the graphic novel , he just throw out all of it .
The belief that the train ’s engine is slowing down is an interesting one , but it conflicts with one of Bong ’s central idea — that the wagon train in Snowpiercer takes exactly a year to circulate the globe , slip away the same turning point on the same dates , and this is how people reckon the passage of clip . So the train is almost like a giant calendar or clock , and every year when you transcend one post , everyone says “ Happy New Year . ” This was one of the first ideas that Bong came up with , and it would n’t work if the engine was slowing down .
This idea of the wagon train being a calendar spread up a lot of other ideas for Bong , which thread up changing the story a pile from what was in the comic .
Is there a Terry Gilliam shoutout in this film ?
John Hurt ’s character is identify Gilliam , and some of the unearthly tyrannous visuals are very reminiscent of some of Terry Gilliam ’s celluloid , especially Brazil . But while Bong is a fan of Brazil , he does n’t consider it much of an influence on this film — this was his first English - language film , so he had a hard time name the eccentric , he said . He just attain for name of famous directors and other mass from American films to come up up with the name .
The biggest enemy of the environment
I ask if the environmental disasters in both The Host and Snowpiercer are Bong ’s way of showing that humans are doomed to wreck our own home ground . Bong respond that it ’s not mankind per se , but capitalism that ’s destroy the environs . So if we could hold human greed , that would go a recollective path towards slowing down our on-going environmental disaster . And Bong channelise out that the methanal being dumped in the water in The innkeeper is something that actually happened in Korea .
skill fiction lends itself to political interrogation
Bong says that the science fable genre lends itself perfectly to questions about course conflict , and different types of revolution . Is it more revolutionary to require to take control of the lodge that ’s oppress you , or to prove and escape from that system altogether ? The Korean fiber whom Curtis rescues , Nam , is not concerned with Curtis ’ ideas of class struggle , and turns out to have ideas that are “ above ” Curtis ’ , says Bong .
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