Snowpiercer Plot Summary
Snowpiercer is a 2013 post-apocalyptic sci-fi action film directed by South Korean Oscar-winner, Bong Joon-ho of Parasite fame. Considered amongst the top modern classics of South Korean cinema, it has an ensemble cast of international actors including Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Tilda Swinton and Octavia Spencer. It is based on the French graphic novel ‘Le Transperceneige’ and deals with a climate disaster on a global scale.
With humanity being reduced to living in the train Snowpiercer run by Wilford (Ed Harris), a hierarchy is put in place where the rich live luxuriously while the poor are locked up in the tail end. Out of hunger and oppression, Gilliam (John Hurt), a spiritual leader of the tail end encourages his protegee, Curtis (Chris Evans) to lead a revolution.
Why is Yona special?
17-year-old Yona (Go Ah-sung) is a ‘train baby’ as she is born on the train. She’s been locked up with her father, Namgoong Minsoo (Song Kang-ho), till they are released by Curtis and his rebels. Like her father, Yona is a Kronole addict with an added ability – she is a clairvoyant. In reality, it just means that since her sight was hindered by the dark, her senses developed almost inhumanly such as her hearing and sense of smell.
Yona’s mother was an Eskimo of Inuit origin and a maid in the front section. She was the leader of the revolution of the Frozen Seven around 15 years ago, who managed to jump off the train but froze to death as they underestimated the weather. This revolt is probably the reason Namgoong falls foul with the authorities and is incarcerated along with his daughter.
How do the rebels get from the tail end to the front?
The rebels with the help of Namgoong and a mysterious informant from the front end advance from the wretched tail end slowly. They fight a horde of axe-wielding men in the decent mid-section and enjoy the luxury of the opulent front section of their cosmos where they get to taste sushi. But they meet stiff resistance every step of the way and each section carries greater danger than the previous section.
There are bloody ambushes. And huge casualties on both sides. Several rebels like Gilliam, Edgar, Tanya, Andrew and Grey are killed. Finally, only Curtis and the Korean father-daughter duo are left, as they reach the huge door behind which is Wilford’s hideout.
What is the problem with Snowpiercer’s Eternal Machine?
Wilford is a transport magnate. His miracle train is self-sustained and possesses the most sophisticated design and advanced technology. Snowpiercer is supposed to be the perpetual machine, hypothetically speaking, but over the years, the machine parts have started to erode.
There are no more spare parts and no repair workshops. So human workers are needed to keep the various engines and machines running. And so from time to time, the soldiers randomly take away people from the tail section and use them for slave labour.
In fact, the space below the Snowpiercer’s main engine is so small that only a tiny person can fit in, so children under five are placed in a drug-induced stupor and forced to work round the clock to keep Snowpiercer running.
What is Curtis’ awful secret?
When Curtis boards the Snowpiercer’s tail end as a teenager, 18 years ago, it is pure chaos. What they go through is worse than freezing to death. There are close to a thousand people in a claustrophobic iron box, with no food and water – Wilford’s soldiers take away everything.
The tail sectioners are forced to resort to cannibalism to survive. Curtis recounts how maddened by hunger, he kills a young mother and grabs her newborn baby but then an old man came forward, cut off his arm and offers it in place of the infant’s life. And a miracle happens. The killings stop. Soon other men come forward cutting off their own limbs and offering them as sustenance.
Swept up by the emotions of pure altruism, Curtis too tries to cut off his arm but doesn’t have the courage to go through with it. The old man was Gilliam, and the baby grew up to be Edgar. Curtis takes young Edgar under his wings, and the boy grows up devoted to his mentor. But Curtis is forever racked by guilt and his past continues to haunt him.
Soon thereafter, Wilford’s soldiers start bringing protein blocks and a sort of order is established and a quasi-normalcy is restored. However, the soldiers keep them in check by freezing limbs as punishment.
What is Namgoong’s ulterior motive in joining the rebels?
Namgoong is not interested in taking over Snowpiercer or killing Wilford. Instead, he wants to bomb the sealed train door leading to the outside. And he has been collecting Kronole all this while for that very purpose. He wants to go the same route as Yona’s mother. He wants to get out of Snowpiercer, which is his prison for the last 18 years.
He tells Curtis that he’s been observing for the past few years that the ice has been steadily melting quite substantially and the snowflakes have become more fragile. And he believes that the conditions are probably survivable out there.
What was the real reason behind the rebellion?
When he finally makes it to the engine room, Curtis is overwhelmed to meet Wilford, a kind-looking, soft-spoken, elegant man (Ed Harris). He is not sure what to make of him. He doesn’t look like the monster that he’d imagined him to be and when Wilford speaks, he makes a lot of sense.
He tells Curtis that all people aboard the train are prisoners in this hunk of metal. And this train is a closed ecosystem. They must always strive for balance – air, water, food supply and even the population. However, there have been times when more radical solutions were required to keep the population in check. They don’t have time for true natural selection. The next best solution is to create uprisings from time to time to cull the herd.
But this time the Curtis Revolution went beyond the original plan, which was for the uprising to end at the mid-section during the Yekaterina tunnel, after which all the survivors (after a number of them had been killed) were supposed to go back to the tail section.
Curtis is shocked to hear that these diabolical plans were formulated by Wilford and Gilliam. He can’t believe his ears when Wilford reveals that Gilliam was his partner, the front and the tail working together. The two strived to ensure that the balance was maintained. However, since Gilliam lost the plot and the front suffered more losses than anticipated, he had to pay the price with his life.
While Wilford talks, his soldiers cull 74% of the tail enders which is his proposed outcome of the uprising. He carries on with his spiel that to survive in this horror zone, one needs a certain level of insanity. If he just kills people every few years, there would be chaos but a fake revolution would pacify people’s urge for change.
Curtis is shaken to hear this and he doesn’t know how to process this revelation. While he is trying to make sense of this madness, he is further taken aback when Wilford offers him his ‘throne’. He wants Curtis to take over, tend to the sacred engine and maintain order and balance. Wilford offers Curtis the responsibility to lead all of humanity and that without leadership, people will devour each other.
Who survives in the end?
Curtis is overwhelmed by Wilford’s words and doesn’t know how to respond. It’s as if he’s in a trance. By this time, Namgoong is desperately battling a horde of the front sectioners and he shouts for Yona to light the explosive and blow open the train door. Yona rushes to Curtis for the light, but the latter is so swayed by Wilford that he pushes her away.
Yona is shocked, but being a clairvoyant, she knows how to break the spell. She drops down on the floor and tries to open the floorboards. As soon as Curtis sees what’s below, his trance breaks. He is horrified as he sees Tanya and Andrew’s kids, Timmy and Andy enclosed in that tiny space, in a drugged state, working at the machines. He hands the matches to Yona and manages to just get Timmy out while sacrificing his hand in the process.
By then Yona lights the spark but Namgoong realises that the engine room’s door has been destroyed in the fight which means they will also face the wrath of the explosion. Just as the train door explodes, Namgoong and Curtis run and shield the kids with their bodies and save them, dying in the process.
The explosion sets off an avalanche. Snowpiercer derails and the fury of nature tosses the locomotive like a couple of matchboxes. All within perish except Yona and Timmy, the last of humanity, innocent and worth saving. They head out in fur coats to see a polar bear, a sign that life outside is possible. They also seem to fare better than those tail enders whose limbs were frozen as the train stops at a lower altitude and there is no wind factor.