Sunday, 27 July 2014

Clash of the classes!

Snowpiercer 2013

This is an exciting movie depicting the world we live in, which goes on with its class system and the ruling elite who masterminds the destiny of life. It uses a moving train as symbolism to our moving planet and its occupants at the tail end as the poor peasants who live life in hardship and misery. The occupants of the front portion live in abundance and decadence. They are the controlling elite who sometimes makes seemingly heartless decisions to sustain continuity of life as they knew it on the continuously moving trans-continental train, which is running at break-neck speed and is self-sufficient in supporting itself.

It is the year 2031. An unsuccessful experiment in 2014 at correcting global warming, the world becomes a tundra land. Life had been eradicated, save for some survivors aboard a self-sustaining always moving train that spans through the continents. Self-sustaining because it harvests water from the snow that the train crushes through, prepares food and lodging for its occupants/passengers. The order was set by hierarchy, the poorer passengers at the tail end and the affluent near the engine. The effluent one is the one who decides the day to day running of affairs with the orders coming directly from the genius who had invented the futuristic train, Wilford.

The separation between the classes can be described as draconian. The people from the back cannot move up forward. Law and order are maintained with guns and force. Interestingly the total population never increases. Punishment is meted in the most inhumane fashion, limbs maimed, and children are taken into the front for unspecified reasons.

Tolerance reached a breaking point. After an earlier failed attempt many years earlier, Curtis, the reluctant leader, heads a mutiny. After discovering that the enforcers were only carrying bulletless assault weapons, they marched forward. The bullets had all finished after the first mutiny.
Slowly, they discover the horrors that were going on under the cloak of maintaining order with the help of a dope addicted electronic genius, Minsu and his junkie daughter Yona.

Minsu and Yona were deliberately drugged to keep them obedient. They discover that the affluent were having a whale of a time with booze, leisure, music and a clean, bright environment, unlike the roach-infested dungeon that they lived. The children that had been taken away were actually made to work the train as some spare parts could be replaced! The supposed protein-enriched nutritious food that the lower class people were served was actually a paste of processed ground insects and roaches!
After finally meeting the elusive Wilfred and discovering the horrific secret of the train and plenty of hellbent fighting the train finally explodes essentially killing all its occupants, save two.

They move out of the train only to discover that there is actually life outside the train; unlike what they were taught to believe.

This film draws parallelism to what is actually happening in our world. The classes are separated using imaginary rules and regulations which do not hold water. Nothing can actually stop defiance and revolt. To keep things in check and balance, we are told that we are the chosen ones. Outside our planet, there is no life form. To sustain life, the elitists create an artificial situation to squeeze out even the last drop of the blood and sweat of the poor peasants. The comfort of the ruling elite is always of paramount importance. The rest of the mortals can just, well go to hell.

On the other hand, continuation and sustenance of a species and civilisation always falls on the shoulders of the selected few in any species who were essentially put there by natural selection to push the being to a different level so that the subsequent offspring would be better prepared to face and win over the endurance race to survival! 

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