Hello and welcome back to the blog! For a while now I’ve been revisiting movies that I used to watch when I was younger, and one that came to mind was Snowpiercer. Snowpiercer directed by Bong Joon Ho (the movie, not the newly created TV series following the same story and title) is about a train that travels around the world full of survivors after the world freezes over when a method of closing a hole in the ozone layer causes a modern ice age. The train is split into different classes with the poor in the back of the train with the wealthy up at the front. Many of the themes have to do with environmental and climate disaster as well as class and arbitrary social standing. This blog will be highlighting Curtis, the main character of the movie as he struggles in the face of becoming God. This character analysis will contain spoilers for Snowpiercer.
Snowpiercer sets up our themes from the beginning. Curtis is a passenger from the back of the train, where the poor are grouped as part of the train’s artificial “ecosystem”, as Wilford (the creator of the train) calls it by the end of the movie. With all of the interactions Curtis has by the beginning of the film, we find that he acts a sort of ringleader to the others and wants to start a rebellion by storming up to the front of the train and taking over so that the large population of the lower class can experience what the upper class (the front end of the train) has had all seventeen years of the apocalypse. With the help of an old mentor named Gilliam and a drug addict named Namgoong and his daughter, he takes the fight to the wealthy.
Strangely, Curtis automatically denies this position of power from the start as part of his rejection of complete and total power. Edgar, a character that acts as Curtis’ sidekick for the first chunk of the movie, very often looks up to him and goes to Curtis for anything he needs. When asked about this behavior by Gilliam, Curtis denies it and doesn’t like how Edgar “worships” him, which seems like an odd choice of words. Regardless, he finds it off-putting, but it is that something plays into other decisions throughout the movie such as when he lets Edgar die so that he can capture someone from the front of the train who has been tormenting them throughout the movie. He knows that he must make sacrifices in order to successfully lead his rebellion. He doesn’t necessarily want his position of power, but his character and decision-making abilities made the other passengers socially appoint him as their leader. This occurs again when Gilliam dies roughly halfway through the movie, to which the other passengers instantly tell Curtis “You are our leader now”. Whether Curtis wants it or not, there are forces within the train that see and expect him to be a leader, someone who they can look up to.
By end of the movie, Curtis confronts Wilford after fighting his way up to the “conductors’ cabin”. Throughout the movie, Wilford is demonstrated to be the metaphorical God of the train since he was not only the one who built it, but also somehow knew that the world was going to be frozen over and built the train in response to the oncoming ice age. In a scene where the rebellion from the back encounter the classroom car of the train, we learn that the children aboard the train are taught to see Wilford as their savior through propaganda videos. A lot of dialogue that their teacher has uses words like “divine” and “sacred”, cementing the idea that Wilford really is seen as a God, especially to those who weren’t even alive to see the Earth when it was still thriving.
Even if this is just rhetoric surrounding Wilford, Wilford gets to play God in an almost literal manner. Curtis and his rebellion often receive notes in their food throughout the movie, warning them of oncoming dangers, potential allies, and important train cars. These messages are sent by William, and they always seem to make it to Curtis one way or another. It becomes an ongoing and often elusive presence because when they find out that Wilford has been the one writing them, it becomes obvious that the rebellion that Curtis led was actually of Wilford’s design. It is revealed that Wilford orchestrated this plan with the help of Gilliam, which is how all of Wilford’s ideas on rebellion made it to Curtis through Gilliam. This revelation ultimately leaves Curtis with a proposal from Wilford: take the mantle of conductor or break the cycle of rebellions starting and ending in order to keep the trains population in check because there is no true “survival of the fittest” aspect on a train run by a hidden God.
Despite the positives of being the strongest person on the train, Curtis rejects this position by having Namgoong blow up a door on the side of the train, which causes a chain reaction that destroys the entire train. While constantly being pushed into the idea and position of an all-powerful leader, Curtis still refuses the mantle because he ultimately wanted a better life for those in the back of the train. With this newfound power, he would perpetuate the terrible conditions that the back of the train is currently enduring until he eventually grew old and died or someone replaced him (similar to what Wilford is trying to achieve.) By rejecting this power, he kills nearly everyone on the train, which could also be seen as Curtis’ version of divine intervention. He ultimately makes a decision for everyone on the train, which is to die rather than suffer on the train for the rest of time.
While I do think Snowpiercer has other avenues to explore deeper such as the class system or the commentary made on the ecological disaster that the story’s setting revolves around, the strengths and weaknesses of the characters themselves have always been more interesting to me. Despite being an action movie for nearly all of its runtime, it still manages to give us characters with a surprising amount of depth due to the situations they must work through in order to survive (or in this case, enact a hostile takeover of a constantly moving train.) The mixture of self-appointed godhood not as an intentionally antagonistic quality is something I find worth investigating, and something that those who find themselves watching this movie for the first time should think about. It’s also interesting to see how the source material for both the movie and TV show originated from a French comic book by the same name. When I get some Free time, I’ll be certain to check it out. See you soon!
-Harper Saglier, Blog Editor
Harper Saglier – Blog Editor, Prose Editor & Layout Editor: Harper is a Senior at Lewis University majoring in English with a concentration in Writing. They are currently employed at the Howard and Lois Adelmann Regional History Collection. When they aren’t reading academic material, they enjoy watching movies and reading books from their endless growing backlog of recommendations. They hope to use the analysis and writing skills gained from Lewis to further drive their interest in literature beyond graduation. Some of their favorite authors include Neil Gaiman and Oscar Wilde.