2014 at the Movies: Veronica Mars

First things first: I happily contributed to the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign last year. I kicked in fifty bucks.

I supported the Veronica Mars movie project mainly because I believe that the canceled TV series is a work of art that carries tremendous value -- and currency -- in our society.  This value and currency arises on three very specific fronts. 

The first front is one that involves gender. Veronica Mars revolves around a smart, resourceful, decent female protagonist.

Importantly, Veronica is not a princess, and she doesn’t own a pony. 

She isn’t rich or powerful.

And yet despite these facts, Veronica successfully makes her way in the world on the very virtues I mentioned above, namely smarts.

I believe this is a message that can’t be transmitted widely enough to young people, and especially women in our society today, who are asked by the pop culture to look-up to the Kardashians as role models. There is significant cultural pressure on American women to be stupid and vain, and to judge themselves by their bodies, their clothes, and the bank accounts of the men they marry.

This is not to say that boys don’t have it tough growing up too, but let’s be real: girls have it worse.

And boys have many more heroes in the pop culture to choose from.

Girls?

They need many more heroes like clever, caustic, cunning Veronica Mars.

The second front that makes Veronica Mars so worthwhile is its crisp, trenchant commentary on the haves and the have-nots. The TV series and film take place in the (fictional) town of Neptune, CA.

 “When the class war comes,” Veronica notes in the movie, “Neptune will be ground zero.” 

This is so because Neptune boasts no middle class, only the ultra-rich and the ultra-poor.

And the ultra-rich control everything. 

Law and order in this town -- justice itself --  remains the purview of the “highest bidder,” and again, this conceit carries tremendous relevance in today’s culture, where certain parties relentlessly push to privatize everything.  It seems that anything for the public -- whether it be schools or the police force -- is deemed “an entitlement” or a “hand-out.”

But the fair application of justice is not an entitlement. It is not a hand-out. It’s something for all Americans, regardless of color, creed, sex, or class.  Veronica Mars sharply and caustically notes, however, that this isn’t always the case in practice.

The third aspect of Veronica Mars that I admire is one involving its specific genre. The TV series vigorously updates the detective/mystery genre, taking into account and revolving around new technology.  Veronica Mars is a private detective extraordinaire, but she operates in the age of I-Phones, social networks, “Google Alerts” and the like. 

In other words, Veronica Mars knowingly updates the film noir genre format, replete with femme fatales, private dicks, labyrinthine mysteries, laconic voice-over narration and other familiar staples of the genre.

But all these “old” ideas get a new coat of paint, and thus new relevance in the Web 2.0 Era. Amazingly, all the sturdy old tropes seem brand new and relevant again with this infusion of the modern.

I once wrote that “Veronica is the Sam Spade for the Wikipedia generation,” and I think that description still works.

So for me, the Veronica Mars (2014) movie could succeed completely only if it addressed itself to all three aspects of the franchise which I’ve tagged above.

To my delight and satisfaction, the feature film continuation nails all three facets of the established mythos. 

And on top of all that, it’s funny as hell too.

Almost a decade ago, Veronica Mars (Kirsten Bell) left behind Neptune, California -- and the private eye biz -- and never looked back.

After leaving Hearst College, she transferred to Stanford, and then Columbia Law School.  Now, Veronica is in the process of applying to high-powered New York law firms like Truman-Mann.

But news that pop-star Bonnie DeVille, late of Neptune, has been murdered draws Veronica back to the life she left behind. She knew Bonnie as high school classmate, Carrie Bishop.

Worse, Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring) -- Veronica’s old on-again/off-again boyfriend -- is the prime suspect in Bonnie’s murder. He was dating her, and was discovered by the police at the scene of the crime.

When Logan calls Veronica for help with his legal woes, she flies back to Neptune to assist. Her trip also coincides with her ten year high school reunion, an event where Veronica catches up with old friends, and renews old rivalries. 

Seeing Logan again also makes Veronica question her stable relationship with current boyfriend, “Piz” (Chris Lowell).

As Veronica uncovers evidence of Logan’s innocence, she also develops an alternate theory about Bonnie’s murder, a theory that involves the death at sea of another Neptune high student, Susan Knight, nine years ago. 

Instead of returning to New York and starting her new job, Veronica becomes veritably obsessed with Logan’s case, causing her P.I. father (Enrico Colantoni) to worry that she is throwing her future away….

Veronica Mars is a faithful, funny big-screen rendering of the very aesthetic that many fans fell in love with nine years ago.  The writing is relentlessly sharp, and the observations about celebrity culture are wicked, mostly because James Franco plays along gamely in an extended cameo appearance.

The movie is, perhaps, a little less sanguine about the characters than the old show was, but that’s to be expected.  The series left Veronica during her first year in college. The movie picks up approximately a decade later, and so Veronica has more of a past to contend this time around.

But again, that’s the point. As Chinatown’s (1974) Jack Gittes (Jack Nicholson) would no doubt remind us at this juncture, the past “never goes away.”

That’s the lesson Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) learns in the film, and one that she accepts in a way she never quite did in the television series.  In some sense the character has always dreamed about escaping from Neptune. And though Veronica likens returning to that town (and her sleuthing ways…) to a drug addiction in the movie, it’s apparent that’s not the case.

The people of Neptune, other than the super-wealthy 09-ers, anyway, need her help. And unless I’m mistaken, this is the first installment of Veronica Mars in which she has acknowledged that she fits a need in Neptune.

It’s not just the place where she belongs; it’s the battlefield of the fight she wants to wage.

It’s very intriguing how the “past” plays into the movie’s murder narrative in a lot of crucial ways. The inescapable past is, after all, an obsession of film noir, going way back.

Logan has basically made good on his life in the last decade, moving some distance from the unstable, violent guy we last met.

But this celebrity murder case threatens to bring his volatile old life right back to him. One prospective lawyer in the film lays out a conceivable defense for him, and it all involves celebrity and fame…a “legacy” (from his troubled parents…) that Logan has tried hard to leave behind. But the past never dies, and he never quite escapes it.

Even Mac (Tina Majorino) -- Q to Veronica’s Bond -- has evolved and changed, and made compromises. Everyone assumed the brilliant “geek” would write her own ticket for millions, but the film finds that she has accepted a job with the corrupt establishment, at Kane Software.

In Veronica Mars-speak, Kane Software is nothing less than the devil, and another signifier of the past.  I suspect a sequel could involve Mac and her job at the company.

Former PCH-er Weevil (Francis Capra Jr.) also must reckon with his past in the film as well and, I’m sorry to report, his past gets the better of him. When he falls back into old (criminal) patterns, he does so because he feels powerless, not because he feels emboldened, like Veronica does.

In terms of the film’s approach to gender, Veronica Mars makes no bones and no apologies about the decisions Veronica forges either in her professional or personal life. She isn’t waltzing to any tune other than her own…and I love that.

In terms of her profession, Veronica can get rich at a firm called Truman-Mann (True Man, Man, essentially), or remain loyal to who she really is, and work for justice in Neptune.

Ultimately, Veronica gives up the life that the male patriarchy -- represented by that very male-sounding law-firm -- promises her, and goes her own way instead. 

It’s a way that does not involve wealth or power beyond measure.  It’s a way that will involve lots of struggle.

Veronica chooses to be her own person anyway.

In one of the film’s best and most honest scenes, Veronica must also make a final choice between Piz and Logan. Someone is going to get hurt no matter whom she selects to date.

Like many of us would, Veronica stalls and delays the decision as long as possible, and then is faced with it head-on, and makes the best one she can.  The emotions in this scene are surprisingly real, and I appreciate that the movie didn’t candy-coat it, or make the wounded party all friendly and accepting.

Sometimes life just hurts.

And again, in her personal life, Veronica does not take the proscribed route, the route of “security” and “stability,” and “expectations.”

Instead, she follows her heart. We see heroes like Captain Kirk or Mal Reynolds or Batman do this kind of thing all the time in movies, but so often in Hollywood women are expected to take the route that leads them to security and wealth, not necessarily self-knowledge or self-fulfillment.

In terms of Veronica Mars’ approach to class-warfare, the movie moves dynamically into the age of “stop-and-frisk.” The local police establishment is corrupt, and is actively seeking to weed-out any element it considers undesirable, guilty or not.  The goal is to make Neptune a community where only the rich and the famous can live, and everyone else -- the worker class -- will have to be bussed in.

It’s the end of the American Dream as we know it. Those who have made (with help from others) it will not offer a helping hand to those who are still trying.

Veronica’s dad is aware of the corruption and conspiracy, and the movie treads into some sinister material without really resolving it. Again, that’s what a sequel is for, I suppose. But Veronica Mars works because we note again the racial and class injustice in Neptune and Veronica is the one who fights it.

Finally, the Veronica Mars movie involves a very contemporary-style mystery (about celebrity culture), harnessing every Web 2.0 Age device or program it can reasonably work in.  We get talk of “Google alerts,” “memory sticks,” “in-boxes,” “sex tapes,” and tablets programmed with the capacity to spy on their owners.

In every sense, the film’s central mystery involves (not unlike the first V/H/S), the way that this modern technology doesn’t connect us, but rather transforms us into voyeurs.  By the same token, Veronica’s use of technology to capture criminals provides the yang to that yin.

It seems that no movie review of Veronica Mars can fail to use the term “fan service,” meaning that the film offers multiple and direct appeals to the hardcore faithful. Uniquely, these two words have rarely appeared in reviews of Star Trek films, or in other properties based upon TV programs. Not many folks seem to be complaining about fan service in the Marvel-based movies.

In truth, this term is code for critical disapproval over the way the film was funded, by Kickstarter, by crowd sourcing. Like Veronica herself, the movie's genesis is unconventional and independent. 

Somehow, folks in the establishment don’t consider that kind of democracy valid, and so noting "fan service" is a way to diminish the film. It's derogatory, to be certain.

How very 09’er…

In point of fact, you don’t really need to know a whole lot about the past of Veronica Mars to enjoy the movie. 

For one thing, there’s an opening montage that goes into a lot of it, certainly enough to understand the film's central narrative. 

For another, the story is entertaining and self-contained, with a delineated opening, middle and end. I mean, the movie is about a girl who used to be a private detective returning to that vocation to solve a mystery. How complicated is that?

I'm guessing that “fan service” is the act of featuring actors in their original roles -- down to the smallest parts -- nine years later, as opposed to re-booting the property with new ones.

So if Veronica Mars is “fan service,” I’d like more fan service, please, and soon. It should become the industry standard.

As you may recall, the theme song to the old Veronica Mars series featured the lyrics, “a long time ago, we used to be friends.” 

Well, with a faithful, funny, and fresh new movie at your back, Veronica, please consider the friendship renewed…

Nice to have you back. 

2014 at the Movies: Space Station 76

Just about my favorite period of science fiction film and television endured from 1968 (and 2001: A Space Odyssey) to 1976, the heyday of Space: 1999.

During this all-too-brief a span, writers, directors and production designers imagined mankind reaching out -- and sometimes faltering -- on his journey to the stars.

Sometimes man’s technology -- whether HAL the computer, or dangerous nuclear waste facilities located on the lunar surface -- vexed him. Yet despite such crises, mankind was on the very brink of some great awakening about himself, and about the nature not merely of the cosmos, but existence itself. 

This promising future, as presented in films like Moon Zero Two (1969), and Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969) and on television programming like UFO (1970) or Earth II (1972), had crisp, white, minimalist lines and bright lights. It featured talking computers, video-phones, and characters who faced the realm of outer space with a cool, even dispassionate temperament, at least at times.

The new film Space Station 76 (2014) from director Jake Plotnick imagines that this early-seventies vision of the future endured, and then actually came to pass. 

In other words, the seventies never ended.

Instead, we took these visions of the disco decade with us not just to the turn of the Millennium, but into the very “space age” future itself.

Accordingly, Space Station 76 features some intriguing anachronisms. In this future age, for example, gay men are still firmly in the closet. African-Americans don’t get assigned to the most “exclusive” space ships. Astronauts smoke cigarettes. Kids watch recorded entertainment on giant VCR recorders and VHS tapes.  And the latest fashion trends from Earth are displayed not on the Internet (which doesn’t exist…), but on imported-from-Earth GAF View-Master discs.

Yet despite an overt lack of the social and technological progress that we recognize and covet in 2014, men and women in this “future” live on space stations, see robot therapists, and travel the stars together.

So the future is fantastic and…retro.

Space Station 76’s premise is abundantly tricky and fun, and the film’s knowledgeable visuals make it an absolute must-see for fans of 1970s science fiction.  Several sets and ship designs will, certainly, ring a bell for genre fans.

The film also deals powerfully, at times, with its central metaphor that people are like asteroids. They fly together “in space” in close proximity but never touch, and never actually connect on a meaningful level. 

Instead, sometimes they merely collide, smashing into one another with catastrophic force.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there’s a feeling of widespread malaise among the characters in Space Station ‘76 and a spiritual emptiness too. Not coincidentally, those things are part and parcel of the 1970s aesthetic as well.

Conspicuous consumption arose (as did President Carter’s “crisis of confidence”) in the seventies when many people began to fill the empty places inside with the pursuit of material things, including wealth.  This shift towards material avarice -- which came to symbolize America in Reagan’s Era -- is embodied in Space Station 76 through the overt failure of several adult relationships, and the burning desire of space station residents to move to Starship 8, a destination which features, among other things, a shopping mall.

Unfortunately, and despite all its intelligence and promise, Space Station 76 struggles mightily to find a consistent tone. The film vacillates between grim, The Ice Storm (1997)-like revelations about human relationships and overt physical comedy, But it never finds the right mode for coherently blending the two. Some of the characters, including the vixen Misty, come off as barely-two dimensional cartoons, whereas others, like Liv Tyler’s Marlowe, seem more realistic.

This inconsistent approach to the material and characters means that those seeking a laugh-out loud comedy will be disappointed by the general seriousness of the enterprise, and those seeking a consistent, dedicated story about life in this “retro universe” will find the bows to conventional, crowd-pleasing humor distracting.

Space Station 76 is smart and knowledgeable in its discussion of the 1970s, science fiction visions of that time period, and human nature, so it’s a shame that, in the final analysis, the film doesn’t come together quite as well as it should have.

“Just relax and let the drugs work.”

A new warrant officer, Lt. Cmdr Jessica Marlowe (Liv Tyler), boards Space Station 76 following the departure of the well-liked Daniel, who left because of some secret scandal.

Captain Glenn (Patrick Wilson) has told various crew members different stories about Daniel’s absence, including the lies that he was promoted, and that he suffered a family crisis. The truth is that Glenn and Daniel were lovers, but that Glenn has not yet accepted his homosexuality, even as he finds himself longing for Daniel’s companionship.

Meanwhile, the ship’s technician, Ted (Matt Bomer) is trapped in an unhappy marriage with Misty (Marisa Coughlan), who is having an affair with another crewman, Steve (Jerry O’Donnell). 

Medicated by the station’s therapist, a robot called Dr. Bot, Misty is also the insecure mother of a young child: Sunshine (Kylie Rogers).

As Marlowe settles in, she and Ted start growing attracted to one another, and Marlow befriends Sunshine, to Misty’s chagrin.

Meanwhile, Captain Glenn is unhappy working with Marlowe because of his feelings about Daniel, and Steve’s wife, Donna (Kali Rocha) is looking to move to luxurious and exclusive Starship 8.

As the holiday season nears, interpersonal stresses on Space Station 76 increase, and a deadly asteroid approaches on a collision course…

“Your whole vibe is stressing me.”

In terms of its visuals, Space Station 76 takes knowing and loving inspiration from the science fiction cinema and television programming of the 1970s. 

The shuttle pod which first carries Marlowe to the station, for instance, looks very much like the Seeker from the Filmation live-action Saturday morning series Space Academy (1977).

Additionally, Marlowe spends much time in the film inside a hydroponics dome, the interior and exterior of which both resemble a similar garden dome on the Valley Forge, from Douglas Trumball’s Silent Running (1972). Domes of this very design later appeared on other productions of the 1970s including Battlestar Galactica (1978) and The Starlost (1973).

Space Station 76 also uses a device similar to an actual 1976 film in one scene. Captain Glenn talks to Daniel on a multi-colored hologram communicator, one that reflects the imagery of Logan's Run (1976) and its hologram.

More intriguingly, perhaps, the interiors for Space Station 76 -- with their white lights and white walls – closely resemble the corridors of Moonbase Alpha in Space: 1999.  

One panel seen in the film -- of three horizontal lighting ellipses -- actually looks like it was transplanted directly from that Anderson-ian facility.

Impressively, Space Station 76’s thematic approach is in fact visualized through this Moonbase Alpha corridor style. Early in the film, we see young Sunshine, replete with a purple crayon, coloring on the immaculate white walls. She scrawls the word “home” on the ivory panels as well.

The moment is not merely a call-back to Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955), but a visual representation of the film’s leitmotif. The purple scribbling on the white wall represents the idea of messy humanity imposing his chaotic nature on an artificial world of immaculate perfection and balance. The characters in Space Station 76 are deeply flawed, even tragic in nature, and they are out of place, and out-of-balance, with their perfectly calibrated environs.

Space Station 76’s robot therapist, Dr. Bot, is also a product of nostalgia for an earlier age of “futurist” imaginings. The robot shrink is actually Tomy’s Verbot, a toy from the early 1980s. The toy was advertised as being a real robot with “a dazzling personality” who would “blink and smile at your request.”

Dr. Bot in the film is not much more advanced than this description suggests, and he offers only off-the-shelf wisdom and platitudes.  In a way, the robot psychologist’s nature as a proverb-quoting automaton may be an oblique reference to the robots in Disney’s The Black Hole (1979), who quoted Cicero and other philosophers. So again, a call back to the disco decade’s space operas.

All these visual touches make one aware that Space Station 76 has been created with a humorous eye towards our historic (and therefore deeply flawed…) visions of the future. When the film adheres to this concept, and crafts jokes based on the fallacies of those historic visions, it is indeed rather funny.  

There’s a scene here in which Keir Dullea from 2001: A Space Odyssey video-phones Marlowe, his daughter, and they share a conversation.  But all the emotional heart of the moment is sacrificed -- thus reinforcing the theme that people talk, but don’t connect -- because Dullea’s character can’t find the right place to sit on camera for the video phone to operate correctly. He ends up half off-screen, a funny moment which makes one grasp, instantly, the impracticality of such a device.

Other moments, such as Glenn’s periodic suicide attempts -- which are prevented by the station’s computer -- don’t work very well at all, and seem downright cartoony compared to the film’s relatively straight-faced exploration of relationship woes. I get the idea, of course.  The late 1960s and early 1970s gave us talking computers that controlled space flight, telemetry, life-support and so forth.  Think about HAL in 2001 or Alpha’s Main Computer on 1999 noting, in a moment of catastrophe that “Human Decision” is “Required.” 

Here, Glenn makes the choice to kill himself, but computer protocols keep overriding his very human decision.

In terms of its overall story, Space Station 76’s inspiration seems to be The Ice Storm (1997), a film based on the 1994 book by Rick Moody.

The novel and the film both concerned an American middle-class family in the 1970s, post-Watergate, and during a time of sexual experimentation. Everything was being questioned in that span, from marriage, to patriotism (because of Vietnam), to the competence of the U.S. Government.  Even marriage -- or perhaps, more accurately -- monogamy, was on the table.  

Space Station 76 deals with similar concerns.  Here families are coming apart at the seams, and there is one galvanizing outside event that serves as a manifestation of their disquiet, not a winter ice storm, but an approaching asteroid on collision course.

Although slapstick humor is always fun, Space Station 76 would have been a stronger film, perhaps had it not strayed so far from the tone of The Ice Storm, which is more cynical and darkly caustic than outright silly. The sillier moments in this retro space film seem out of left field, while the more serious ones, for the most part, are genuinely affecting. Played straight (at least on the surface), the film would have felt more powerful, and less scatter-shot.

There’s so much going on in Space Station 76, and I don’t mean to give the impression that the film is a failure.  I admire it quite a bit both for its canny knowledge of the films and TV shows I love, and for the manner in which its visual form -- asteroids and malfunctioning video chats -- represent interpersonal alienation. 

But the over-the-top jokes tend pull the whole affair back down to Earth.

2014 at the Movies: Snowpiercer

[Blogger’s note: Please beware of spoilers here, folks, I talk a lot of specifics about the film in the following review…]

Since 1927 and the premiere of the Fritz Lang film Metropolis, the science fiction cinema has frequently obsessed on the ever-widening gap between society’s most fortunate people and society’s most unfortunate people: the haves vs. the have-nots. These two constantly-clashing groups might be defined (and separated) by barriers of class, race, occupation, or wealth.

The new genre film Snowpiercer (2014) continues this long-standing historical tradition -- also seen in recent efforts such as In Time (2011) and Upside Down (2013) -- and very much proves itself the film that Elysium (2013) hoped to be.

Snowpiercer is a far more effective film than Elysium, however because its central metaphor simply works better. The core conceit is cleaner somehow, and therefore more readily grasped.

In the future year 2031 as imagined by Snowpiercer all that remains of mankind during a new Ice Age huddles on a self-sufficient train that goes around in an endless loop -- thus never reaching new territory -- while the ultra-rich live at the front of the train and gobble up the lion’s share of the resources.

Meanwhile, the poor folks dwell in the back of the train, and literally must sacrifice an arm and a leg just to maintain their meager, impoverished existence. To survive, to have a life worth living, means storming the front of the train and staking a claim.

Notably, Snowpiercer possesses nuances and depth not seen in the populist Elysium because it recognizes an uncomfortable truth about changeovers in social order. Even if the lower class somehow ekes out a win here, it is likely that things won’t change much for the vast majority of the people.

The very nature of life on this post-apocalyptic train -- a balanced, closed system -- in some crucial sense seems to reinforce the inequality of the status quo. 

The poverty-dwelling heroes of the film believe that “it will be different” when they control the train for themselves, but instead they find only the temptation to be co-opted and assimilated. This becomes their moment of truth.

Accordingly, those who survive the long journey from caboose to front compartment must reckon with two options. 

They can either continue a life that is familiar, only occupying a slightly-different (but still enslaved…) position. Or they can blow up everything and start fresh.

Yet because of the nature of human life, there’s no guarantee that “starting fresh” will create anything more equitable than the class stratification of this train hurtling down the fast track to nowhere.

In a significant fashion, Snowpiercer -- though based on a graphic novel from 1982 called Le Transperceniege -- reflects our 2014 political weariness and cynicism. The movie dwells in that gnawing, familiar sense that no matter which party is driving the train, things won’t meaningfully change for the least fortunate of us. We all just keep going around in a circle, and the rich stay rich while the poor stay poor. 

This notion is played out explicitly in the film by the revelation of a secret alliance that exists between the humble, seemingly moral leader of the poor (John Hurt), and the privileged, “creator” or engineer at the front of the train (Ed Harris).  They are colluding to maintain this society, even if it is a distinctly unequal society.

A clever pastiche of dystopian cinema and one rich with allusions to productions from Robert Altman’s Quintet (1979) to The Matrix Reloaded (2003), Snowpiercer succeeds as a driving, action-packed work of science fiction art not only because its central metaphor resonates with our current “makers vs. takers” national dialogue, but because the narrative is structured in recognizable, even classical terms. 

To wit, the journey of discovery undertaken by our protagonist, Curtis (Chris Evans) in this terrible future from one revelatory train car to the next -- and one level of hideous existence to the next -- alludes to old stories such as The Divine Comedy, a work which charts and describes the various and sundry levels of Hell itself. 

Only here, of course, the hell is of one of our very own making...

"We go forward."

A scientific initiative to stop dangerous global warming goes awry in the near future. 

Particles known as CW-7 are seeded in Earth’s atmosphere to stop the climate change, but instead they accelerate a freezing process. In a short time, a New Ice Age commences, and all life becomes extinct save for a few survivors on a trans-continental train.

Seventeen years later, in 2031, a new society is long-established on that train. The rich elite live in the front section, using up resources and living in leisure and comfort.  At the rear of the train are the folks who boarded for free and who live in squalor, eating mysterious black protein bars for sustenance.

In 2024 there was a failed revolt among the passengers on the back of the train, and now a new one is brewing under the auspices of a man named Curtis (Evans), his friend Edgar (Jamie Bell), and an old man, Gilliam (Hurt). They free a security expert, Namgoong (Kang-ho Song) from prison, along with his daughter, and he helps them to open the sealed doors to forward compartments.

Heading relentlessly for the train’s fore, Curtis and other survivors uncover the car where their food is prepared, and a car filled with heavily-armed soldiers.  Later, they pass through a school that teaches the elite’s propaganda, an aquarium, a green house, and other signs of a decadent culture that thrives on keeping them not just poor and hungry, but angry.

Finally, Curtis makes it to the "sacred engine" at the train's fore, and meets the engineer of the society and the vehicle.

This time we take the engine."

Class warfare rages on a futuristic train in Snowpiercer. One privileged overlord, Minister Mason (Tilda Swinton) boasts open disdain for the people who live in the vehicle’s aft section.  

She informs them in no uncertain terms that they are takers. 

They “suck on the generous tit” of the train’s engineer -- a real “maker” -- named Wilford (Harris). And in real life, going back at least to the 2012 election, we have seen American politicians use virtually the same language to describe 47% percent of our population as moochers...all because they think they are "entitled" to food.

Who among us is not entitled to eat?

Mason also refers to those seeking a better life as being “violent hooligans.” They should just be happy for what they have, she believes and “know” their “place.”

And what is their place?  

They're "shoes," Mason informs them.

“When the foot seeks the place of the head, a sacred line is crossed,” she also notes. 

Mason seems to argue, then, for a kind of natural law; one where the chosen few -- at the head of the "body" -- engineer a less-than-pleasant reality for everyone else.  

The elites must have someone to prey on, after all, to show that they are better than everyone else. To this end, they indoctrinate their children with hate-laced propaganda.  An indulged child in school, for instance, observes: "I heard all Tail Sectioners were lazy dogs and they drink their own shit."

In other words, the 99% are less-than-human. Today, we see a certain brand of talk-radio and cable television host similarly de-humanizing people of specific demographics. The targets have been different at different times in American and world history, though right now it is immigrants who are being compared regularly to disease-ridden, inhuman savages.

Yet at the same time that the elites lord it over the poor in Snowpiercer, the beleaguered masses must have someone to blame or hate, or rage against too...to keep them distracted from the job of really changing things. They have their gatherings, their plots, their protests, and occasionally their riots, but the world doesn't seem to change.

Curtis believes this revolt will be different however, because he intends to capture the  train's sacred engine. Curtis wants to seize the means of energy production in other words, that maintains the luxury of the elites. 

The train engine, therefore, is a metaphor in the film for industry, or even the economy as a whole. Seize control of it -- nationalize it for the people's use instead of the oligarchy's -- and powerful will take note. Destroy the capacity to keep rich people wealthy and distribute resources equally...and it is a new day.

But as Curtis learns, it is not that simple.

Uniquely, the real problem between the haves and have-nots arises on the train when Mason refuses specifically to recognize the humanity of the 99%’s children. 

These kids are mere resources to be taken away (so as to assure the continued survival of the elite) and not treated as true individuals, or as people with families. The taking of two innocent children is the demarcation point for the revolt: the slope leading from poverty and dissatisfaction to recognition of literal enslavement and an attempt at overthrow. 

The message here seems to be that people will put up with a lot of shit from their overlords if they are scratching by. But start messing with their kids and all bets are off. I believe this is so because children are non-political in every way, and so to transform them into political pawns is a truly despicable and craven thing.  

And -- yes indeed -- treating other people's children as "enemies" (or worse...as disease-carrying vermin) is something that is happening in America too. I'm not saying Snowpiercer  anticipated the crisis at the border we are now enduring, only that the film speaks fluently in a language and national context that we, at this juncture, readily understand.

What makes this all so insidious, however, is the fact that the ruling elite actually helps to foster the revolt (as it did previous revolts) for its own agenda. Wilford plans to thin out the population, and to provide the easily cowed folks of the aft-compartment the illusion that change has been made.  The poor can then rest satisfied that they made a difference, and that things, suddenly, are fairer. 

And yes, this idea very much reflects the pivotal scene with the Architect in The Matrix Reloaded.  There, as you may recall, a revolutionary, Neo (Keanu Reeves), learns about the Order of Things.  He learns that the A.I. machines have destroyed Zion before, and repopulated it with humans, and started the cycle all over again, always crafting a new, better system of control.  

Curtis learns essentially the same truth from Wilford in Snowpiercer. Revolts have been staged or arranged by Gilliam and Wilford, at the front and back of the train, and each time, a new, better “order of things” emerges, with the elite more firmly in control.

Ultimately, this is why the film is more effective than Elysium proved to be. Snowpiercer suggests that the elite will throw the poor a bone now and then to quell them, but beyond offering sacrificial goats, they offer nothing of value.  The system continues, and tightens its grip on the masses.  There are no winners and losers, only level after level of control. Dystopian systems aren't simply overturned and made better because a new master takes over.  Life is infinitely more complex than that "happy" ending could suggest.

In some ways, Snowpiercer actually feels a lot like a (smart) amalgamation of other science fiction pictures particularly those of the 1960s and 1970s.  The Ice Age future with mankind on the brink of extinction clearly echoes Quintet, a film involving Paul Newman as a last survivor of the human race following global cooling. 

In both cases, the next generation or perhaps last generation plays a crucial role in the narrative. In Quintet, a pregnant woman, Newman’s mate, is killed, thus leaving no hope for the future. Only entropy awaits instead. In Snowpiercer, the children are stolen and made slaves, again a sign of a future if not without hope, then certainly without freedom or liberty.

Similarly, Curtis and his friends at one point in the narrative take over a train car where they learn the secrets behind their food supply, these gelatinous black blocks they eat. It is not a pleasant discovery, to say the least.

The rebels learn that they are eating something not entirely appetizing, and though the secret of the food supply is not the same as the one revealed  Soylent Green, the nature of  the revelation is similar.  The people are being sustained and nourished by a dreadful, disgusting source. In both cases, we also witness a sort of industrial process by which the awful food is prepared, out of sight of the consumers.  The masses are being fed by the elite, but what they are being fed is monstrous.

The most unique comparison, however, is a visual grace note -- a brief moment -- that seems to compare astronaut Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) to engineer Wilford in Snowpiercer.  

Near the end of 2001, Bowman (Keir Dullea) travels through a mysterious Stargate and ends up in a world made for one. He sits alone, eating from fine China and drinking wine, on the verge of his evolution into something greater than mere human.  Around him, he sees signs of a technological world (a glowing tiled floor) and a traditional one (decorated like a Victorian sitting room). This is appropriate, because his going to carry the legacy of humanity into his new form, as the Star Child.

In Snowpiercer, we witness Ed Harris as Wilford -- similarly dressed in a robe over his clothes -- alone at a dining table with fine china and wine, in his exclusive world of one.  Like Bowman, he is depicted in a setting that seems to straddle both future technology and conventional or traditional decorations.

But unlike his Kubrickian, space-age predecessor, Wilford is not on the verge of evolution at all. Rather, he has embraced the draconian "natural order" that imposes constant balance -- a constant status quo -- and thus, finally stagnation and entropy.  

The images are very similar, but portend virtually opposite meanings. Bowman is on the verge of becoming something great. Wilford is about to be brought down, along with his entire system of control.  

Snowpiercer also features some terrific and even stirring action sequences, and it is this aspect of the film that will thrill many viewers the most, I suppose. One brutal fight in a tight train car -- undertaken in a dark tunnel, no less -- is brilliantly staged and shot.  And another sequence, involving the rapid-fire laying down of barrels or drums to prop open conquered compartments, almost rises to the same level of crazy ingenuity.  

There's also a strong sense of discovery underlying the film's narrative structure, and this quality keeps the viewer engaged.

Each new open door means an entrance into a different world. Sometimes, the new world is awe-inspiring (like the aquarium car), sometimes it is nightmarish (like the school room with a gun-toting teacher and the brainwashed students), and sometimes it is just bizarre, like the hedonistic realm of the elite, lost in their drug-filled reveries.  

This story structure -- a new world opened with each new door -- is what specifically reminded me of Dante, and his famous, literary tour of Hell, where readers met sinners of every variety known to man. With some imagination, the train in Snowpiercer fulfills the same function, especially when Curtis reveals -- in heart-wrenching terms -- his own terrible personal sin.

 This is truly a train of the damned, in more ways than one.

There's much to write about regarding Snowpiercer, and frankly, I've only scratched the surface.

There's an element of the film that concerns how idealism gives way to practicality, or -- again -- entropy. We all believe that we will be generous and equitable when we "get to the top," but is that true?  You don't really get to the top unless you're willing to step over a few backs.

Similarly, the film suggests there is an idealism inherent in"storming the train" that doesn't necessarily survive to the difficult task of "governing" the train. When you're starving, you just want to eat. It's a simple goal. When you have responsibility for a thousand lives and an eco-system, however, there are trade-offs, and other things to consider.

It would have been very easy to make Snowpiercer a sort of rabble-rousing, popular movie filled with easy or facile answers about life. Instead, the makers of the film understand that life isn't that simple, and -- working with a clear, focused metaphor in the form of the train -- add on layers of thematic and narrative complexity that make us realize we're all riding a runaway train of sorts, and that, finally, it may not even matter who's driving the bloody thing.