Binge-r #196: Snowpiercer + Eurovision Song Contest
Cold Comfort: Daveed Diggs (Andre) and Jennifer Connelly (Melanie) in Snowpiercer
SNOWPIERCER S1
Streaming Service: Netflix
Availability: Six episodes now streaming, new episode each Monday
I told myself I wouldn’t watch the Snowpiercer series, because I loved the movie of the same name it reboots, Parasite director Bong Joon-ho’s incisive revolutionary action-drama from 2013. But it’s a quiet week – no, I will not review Netflix’s Floor is Lava gameshow – and the concept of Snowpiercer, first seen in a 1982 French graphic novel, is so strong that it can carry a longer second take. Both film and series use the lens of a train, circling a post-apocalyptic word, with humanity’s remnants on board to document inequality’s cruelty and the feudal barbarity that class differences can so easily assume. The show takes that striking metaphor, where privilege dissipates the further back your carriage is, and gives it daily detail and multiple perspectives. It’s not great, but the series holds its own.
If you’re familiar with movie, which is fronted by Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton and is also streaming on Netflix, then you’ll recognise the literal and fictional parameters of Snowpiercer: the sequential train carriages that run from the mundane to the fantastical, the strictures that the subjugated “tailies” live under at the train’s rear, and the will to overthrow their overlords, culminating with the unseen overseer of the train, billionaire Mr Wilford. But the cast is new, and the chief protagonist is Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs), a homicide detective from before the world was lost to a new Ice Age who is plucked from the tail, where he’s planning an uprising, and asked to solve a lurid murder that has Wilford’s coolly coiffed representative, Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly), worried about stability.
Andre’s investigation, in the company of one of the train’s security officers, Bess Till (Mickey Sumner), lets him range across the 1001 carriages and the intricate infrastructure they contain. There are blue collar working people of third class and dank humour from the mega rich living in permanent opulence, although you have to get through a shaky second episode for the plot to open up. A self-sustaining ecosystem is open to corruption, but the points Josh Friedman and Graeme Manson’s show steadily make don’t build on what Bong did in two hours. What it does allow for is some added nuance: survivor guilt as humanity numbers a mere 3000 and the belief system of those who serve the ruling system. As facsimiles go it’s fine, with a bonus parochial point for the character who declares, “Guys, I’m the last Australian!”
>> Further Reading: For The Age I wrote about Operation Buffalo, the ABC’s wildly uneven and sometimes unworkable 1950s nuclear test comic-drama that’s currently streaming on ABC iView [full review here].
Keyboard Warriors: Will Ferrell (Lars) and Rachel McAdams (Sigrit) in Eurovision Song Contest
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
EUROVISION SONG CONTEST (Netflix, 123 minutes): With Eurovision 2020 cancelled by the Coronavirus, Netflix’s Will Ferrell comedy about the gaudy glories of the now globe-spanning singing competition now serves as both a satire and a substitute. Ferrell puts an Icelandic spin on his familiar entitled idiot persona, playing struggling musician Lars Erickssong, who with his daffy if supportive collaborator, Sigrit Ericksdottir (Rachel McAdams), comes to Edinburgh to represent his homeland at Eurovision. The ludicrousness of the gathering, and some Icelandic tropes, get sent up, but the recreation of the event – particularly musically – is surprisingly faithful. The crazier the song here, the more it actually recalls past Eurovision highlights. Directed by David Dobkin (The Wedding Crashers), the film never quite escapes being a succession of skits overlaid on a Ferrell rise, fall, and redemption arc. The script is decent but the songs and the cast give it some anarchic spirit – as extravagant Russian pop star Alexander Lemtov, the now officially chameleon-like Dan Stevens is an outrageous hoot. That’s about the best this minor pleasure has to offer.
New on SBS on Demand: The Running Man (1987, 97 minutes) is one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daftest 1980s B-movies, yet this story of a murderous vigilante gameshow in a dystopian future feels like it’s one good network TV pitch away; Rodd Rathjen’s Buoyancy (2019, 88 minutes) is a gripping, intimate tale of exploitation and complicity that follows a 14-year-old Cambodian boy (Sarm Heng) enslaved by Thai commercial fishermen.
New on Stan: Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964, 89 minutes) is one of the great screen musicals, a story of first love starring a young Catherine Deneuve and a blissful colour palette; Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant were exceptional movie stars and Notting Hill (1999, 125 minutes) makes exceptional use of them both in an assured romantic comedy.
>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here to read about Stan’s smart new sibling celebrity comedy The Other Two and Spike Lee new Netflix movie Da 5 Bloods.
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>> Check the complete BINGE-R archive: 243 series reviewed here, 144 movies reviewed here, and 34 lists compiled here.
