Movie Review: "Snowpiercer"

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
- Robert Frost

In Snowpiercer, director Bong Joon-ho gets to have his ice and his fire, too. I'm a big fan of the apocalyptic action thriller, especially when it involves a focus on questionable science (see also: The Core, The Day After Tomorrow, Armageddon), but I did not enjoy this film. I don't enjoy gory or overly violent movies, and had to close my eyes during violent episodes throughout the movie. So with that caveat, I have a few comments. For a more general review of the movie, check out the NYTimes' review.

The film has some scenes of beauty, both of the train's interior and of the frozen tundra outside. What's left of the world is snowy, but not with deep enough snow to hide the frozen forms of the destroyed cities and ships that the train passes on its annual journey. I liked that time was marked on board by the passing of landmarks outside. I wish more film time had been spent on developing the relationship between the train and the frozen earth over which it passes - how does this train work, exactly? But the film's focus was almost exclusively on life inside the train. (Perhaps the graphic novel goes into more detail.) But evidently this film does not fall neatly into my category of "apocalyptic action thriller with a focus on questionable science," although it does flirt with the genre. It's also part-horror and part-drama, with a tiny bit of sci fi.

I enjoyed the few moments of Terry Gilliam-esque absurdity, especially the scenes with the school-car and the food production. Even the part when they discover Timmy (I won't spoil it) had a certain Gilliam-like quirk to it that I could appreciate, though (or despite that?) it reminded me of the Doctor Who episode "The Girl in the Fireplace." The overall set-up of the movie also reminded me strongly of the BioShock game series, with its separate worlds run by businessmen of questionable morals, and with its high amount of gory violence.

So while I can appreciate the comparisons that A. O. Scott for the Times makes to Brazil and The Poseidon Adventure, both of which are movies I greatly enjoy, I have to come down against the film on a personal level. Most of the movie I found myself turning away. If violence doesn't phase you, this might be a great summer movie. It might even get you thinking. There's some stuff about class going on, and environmentalism too, but I was too distracted by the bloodshed to notice. As someone who enjoys seeing the world saved at the end, I was a bit disappointed, very disturbed, and somewhat confused by this film. All I really took home from it is, "humanity is awful and we're all going to die."

As the poet imagined, if the world is to end twice, both ice and fire will do - in this case, you can expect both. But don't expect much humor or hope along the way.

Book Review: "Theory and Design in the First Machine Age"

Reyner Banham 's Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) is an engaging overview of the important theoretical developments of the early 20th century leading up to the "International Style" of the 1930s-40s. Banham does a fairly good job, in my opinion, of avoiding excessive editorializing, although he has a clear viewpoint on the Modern Movement and finishes with a strong conclusion. In opposition to his teacher, Nikolaus Pevsner , whose own history of modernism came out in 1936, Banham dismantled the " form follows function " credo that became the stereotype of modernism, arguing instead that formalism (a preoccupation with style and aesthetics) was an important, if not overriding, concern of Modern architects. Two sections of the book struck me in particular: his analysis of Le Corbusier's famous book Vers une architecture (Toward a [new] architecture) from 1923, and his Conclusion (chapter 22), where he breaks the link between functionali...

Vertical Bike Rack

The work of our hands! A little backstory: We bought two bikes as soon as we could after moving here, so we could both bike to work. After a few uneventful months of chaining up our bikes next to our car in the carport of our apartment building, Justin's bike was stolen. (Mine was mysteriously left behind, together with Justin's pannier, which the thieves helpfully folded up and placed on top of my bike. My only guess is that the chain holding my bike was harder to cut than the chain on Justin's.) Since then, we've kept our bikes inside, hauling them up and down two flights of stairs to our third-floor apartment every time we take them out, which is usually a few times a week. Ugh. Better than buying a new bike every few months, though. We needed a rack that would keep the bikes off the floor, off the walls, and in as small a footprint as possible, without requiring us to drill into or otherwise damage the walls (or floor or ceiling). ...

Infrastructure and Urbanism in 1920s Sarasota, Florida

This post is based on research I did for "History of the American City" taught by Gwendolyn Wright this past fall. As an undergraduate in architectural history I was encouraged to think critically about my home town as part of an exercise in historical writing. This past semester, for a course focused on the history of American cities, I decided to take this further and research the history of the city as a whole. I was surprised to find that Sarasota, Florida , has a much richer architectural history than I had understood from living there as a teenager. Settled as a frontier outpost in the 19th century, it grew thanks to tourism, the circus , and real estate speculation, resulting in an incredible expansion in the 1920s that died with the Great Depression. The city grew again after WWII, and in the 1950s was home to the Sarasota School of Architecture , a nationally-renowned architectural style and movement (not a physical school) that produced early attempt...

Not Built in a Day

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