Snowpiercer has a timely message
TV’S futuristic, apocalyptic Snowpiercer comes with a timely message
One-thousand-and-one cars long ... It’s the line repeated at the beginning of each episode of the dystopian drama Snowpiercer, based on the Bong Joon Ho cult classic film from 2013, itself based on the 1982 graphic novel series, Le Transperceneige.
Though the phrase hails from a made-up world in which Earth has frozen over and only 3,000 humans survive aboard a train that circumnavigates the globe in perpetuity, there is much about Snowpiercer that is relatable at the moment — not least of which being confined to a finite amount of space.
Graeme Manson, the showrunner on Orphan Black for its five-season run, was brought in as head conductor for Snowpiercer after the original pilot saw its executives and creatives part ways. This version of the TV show, which has already secured its second season, has been called a continuation of sorts from Bong’s film, though a more apt description might be a reimagining of it.
While the conceit is the same — the world has frozen because of climate change, most of its population has died, and a few people of varying socioeconomic backgrounds have made it onto the only vessel built for survival — the biggest change is in the story’s two lead characters, neither of whom was in the movie: Melanie Cavill, played by Jennifer Connelly, and Andre Layton, played by Daveed Diggs.
At the beginning of the series, both characters are at opposite ends of the survival spectrum, literally and figuratively. They believe their truth is the ultimate and worth fighting (or killing) for. As head of hospitality and the right hand of Mr. Wilford — the train’s engineer and supreme leader, a godlike figure no one is actually allowed to see — Cavill represents the conservatives. However, by the end of the first episode, we find out she probably has much more to offer as she switches out her crisp teal-blue suit set for MIT sweats and sneakers and takes a seat in the engine room.
Layton, who lives in the “tail” with those who couldn’t afford a ticket onto Snowpiercer and forced their way in, was a homicide detective before the world froze over. This is what eventually gets him up-train, as Cavill summons him to help solve a murder in second class.
Diggs, of Tony- and Grammy-winning Hamilton fame, connected with Layton’s moral code, idea of justice and demands for equality. But the Broadway actor is not impervious to the ways in which, both on the show and in real life, the dissemination or withholding of information can change our perception of reality.
As “you actually start to understand the system you’re trying to work around or within or against, it’s a lot more difficult to be as idealistic. Those are interesting conversations that are relevant (to today),” Diggs says. “And if a work of fiction can encourage that kind of thinking or discussion in our regular lives, maybe in the best-case scenario, (it) helps us figure out how to ... understand the methods of people who seemingly have totally different ideological beliefs.”
The show’s messaging is eerily reminiscent of real life, especially as it pertains to climate change. But its confinement and loss are what Connelly feels ring most true right now.
“In the show versus the film, we’re set closer to the moment of departure,” she says.
“The loss, the transition is that much newer. So, everyone on the train is dealing with the communities (and) the people that they left behind, the places on Earth that they long to go see that they miss, the lives that they had that are gone.”
Diggs says Snowpiercer is a way to examine class and the effect of capitalism on the environment — aspects of life that have always been present, but that now may take on more significance through the cultural lens with which audiences will be viewing it.
“The sense of loss is particularly palpable,” he says. “There’s a sort of loneliness that is persistent throughout the train and a longing for a world that (was).”
And while the cast and crew couldn’t have known their show would be premièring in a world where being trapped inside is the norm and the gulf between the haves and have-nots is starkly visible, its parallels, like any good sci-fi story, can haunt our dreams.
The sense of loss is particularly palpable.
There’s a sort of loneliness that is persistent throughout the train and a longing for a world that (was).