Adapted from Bong Joon Ho’s 2013 film of the same title, Snowpiercer is a futuristic commentary on class set 7 years after humans destroy the Earth and climate change pushes us into an ice age. Propelled by a perpetual-motion engine, the last survivors of humanity live on a train constantly circling the globe, where class warfare, social injustice, and the politics of survival play out.
The way the train is structured is people are divided into 4 classes: first, who live a life of luxury and waste; second, who are the upper-middle class equivalents; third, the working class that keeps the train running; and the tail, non-ticketed passengers that are constantly starving, living in darkness, and abused by the above three. When a murder happens in the upper classes, a detective from the tail (the only choice of detective on the train) is sent to investigate in a police-procedural format while gathering information for the tail in order to stage a revolution and do away with the class system.
The two leads of this show are Melanie Cavill (played by Jennifer Connelly), who heads up hospitality and caters to first class at the will of “Mr. Wilson,” the train’s mysterious creator, and Andre Layton (played by Daveed Diggs), the tailie detective who investigates the murder. The two characters lead us into a view of the ultra-elite and ultra-oppressed on the train, and is a metaphor for today’s class divisions of the 0.001% and the poverty-striken communities.
The series starts off veryyyy slow, with little happening in each episode and the episodes sort of dragging on into something close to torture-porn to show the horrific atrocities in the tail, but about midway through the first season, it moves away from this procedural approach into something more serialized, some crazy and unexpected things happen, and it becomes a much more enjoyable watch. Jennifer Connelly is the cold, but powerful woman you love to root for, and my favorite characters are Ruth (played by a fellow Allison, Alison Wright – woohoo the Americans!) and Bess (played by Mickey Sumner, who I haven’t seen before but thoroughly enjoy), who are Melanie’s and Andre’s right hands, respectively. The whole show is well acted, and as it picks up the story-lines are much more engaging.
I still think that having the fate of humanity depend on a train that has to constantly keep moving for survival is a ridiculous premise. The more you learn about the train’s operations, the less it makes sense – from obvious things like how they could have laid tracks over a frozen ocean to travel across the globe, to minor things like Melanie going back and forth across the train (which is 1,001 cars long) like it’s an easy-peasy stroll. You need to suspend belief and turn away from the logic of this universe for it to make any sense. However, if you can get over it (which I did towards the end of season one), it becomes an enjoyable, if not taken too seriously, show.
Did you watch Snowpiercer – either the television show or the movie? What did you think? If not, what are some shows you’re watching right now that you enjoy and I should check out?
