Snowpiercer is shaping up to be the sleeper succeeder of 2014 . But no one has yet point out on one of the moving-picture show ’s most unusual subtexts — its direct allusions to Gnosticism , the ancient Christian feeling system that was damn by the Roman Church as heretical and nigh stub out by the fifth century .
Despite its obscurity , Gnosticism still maintain a profound , if rarely acknowledge , influence on the twenty-first century popular imagination . Like the Matrix trilogy and The Truman Show before it , Snowpiercer is a Gnostic allegory par excellence .
A core tenet of Gnosticism is that our cosmos , or the forcible existence , is the conception of a false god , or demiurge , who pretends to be a benevolent Almighty but is in fact a malign sham intent on keeping humans imprisoned in an unreal world of magic trick and suffering . The only means of escapism is gnosis ( Greek for knowledge ) — rising up from alkali materialism to reject the demiurge and break through into the high human beings of the spirit .
Wilford , the Divine of the eponymic Snowpiercer in Bong Joon - ho ’s visionary scientific discipline fiction epic , has fabricated our world in microcosm . It ’s an tremendous , interconnect ecosystem that — because of its function as an ark for the all that persist of humanity — truly is their only world ( young Timmy calls it “ the whole wide train ” ) . Snowpiercer flips the Gnostic model of the cosmos sideways , however , and instead of move vertically from the lower fabric world to the higher , more high-minded apparitional land , the hind end - enders ’ seeking takes them horizontally from the Dickensian underworld of the cabin car to the rarified heaven of the aeonian locomotive .
Because the Gnostic globe is a prison , the demiurge is its insane , sadistic warden . Wilford ( played by Ed Harris ) openly admits his madness : “ I trust it ’s easier for someone to survive on this train if they have some level of insanity , ” he tells Curtis . “ We want to uphold a proper balance of anxiety and fear , bedlam and revulsion . ” lover of 1998 ’s The Truman Show will note that this is not Ed Harris ’s first role as fancied demiurge . In Truman , Harris is the producer / creator of Truman ’s televised “ reality”—another illusory world from which Truman ultimately escape .
Ed Harris as the demiurge in The Truman Show . Note visual law of similarity to Snowpiercer ’s engine , above .
help the Demiurge in his task to keep humans enslave are being known to the Gnostics as archons , or fiendish servants akin to prison guards . These are marvelously characterized in the blood - bat , tape measure - measure - wield Claude , Tilda Swinton ’s masterfully weird Ayn Rand - lookalike Minister Mason , and the train ’s faceless , black - armoured security force-out .
The primal demand Gnostic Christianity spot on its follower is to break loose from what gnostic skill fabrication writer Philip K. Dick calledthe “ dim iron prison ” of physical existenceinto the higher , purer mankind of spirit . Many of the train ’s passenger go for the quick , convenient escape via kronole , the hallucinogenic drug made from toxic waste – which does eventually alleviate the last prisonbreak , albeit in an unexpected fashion . Curtis and his ring of ass - enders force their room through the sequential Bill Gates ( “ storm the gates of heaven ” ) seeking strong-arm dismission , though until the end of the plastic film we are not sure what form their freedom will take . Still , like the Gnostics of the second century , they are nonetheless compelled to get away their torment at any cost .
look at Snowpiercer through a Gnostic lens also illuminates one of the more bizarre scenes in the movie , and likely one that manufacturer Harvey Weinstein want to cut from the U.S. version . This is when the heavily - armour and disguise guard slice a carp , ritualistically coating their hatchets with its line . If you opine of the Pisces as Christ and , by extension , his follower ( i.e. , Curtis and his disciples ) another piece of the film ’s mythology falls into place .
The same goes for the moment when Curtis expresses his ambivalency about his messiah status ( Father , if M be uncoerced , remove this cup from me ) and his rejection of Wilford ’s offer to take his place ( a direct nod to Jesus refusing Satan ’s standardised offer in the Judean desert ) . In one of the rather sonorous - handed examples of Christian symbolization , we see Curtis ’s hand pierced by a bullet — an iconic image of the crucifixion .
Even the seat section ’s cannibalism is well understood as a literalization of the Biblical Eucharist , the offer of one ’s own flesh as food for the salvation of others . In Curtis ’s climactic confessional , we get a line the full story of the guiding mythology of the buns section . “ Eat this , ” Gilliam says , declare oneself his severed weapon to Curtis and the starving mob spirit on go through the baby Edgar . Curtis could not hack off his own branch during what he delineate as Gilliam ’s “ miracle , ” but he ultimately does sacrifice his arm to pull Timmy from the engine ’s infernal machinery . The last sacrifice of not just his arm , but his life story , destroys the Snowpiercer and start the two subsister , Timmy and Yona ( as Adam and Eve ) , to lead off a new human airstream on the warming planet .
And this only scratches the surface of Snowpiercer ’s profoundly implant gnosis , which is mostly absent from the Gallic comic on which the film is establish . Is Snowpiercer a Gnostic Christian motion picture ? dead and unambiguously . But it ’s not , as some might conclude , polemical spiritual propaganda . Like most compelling seer works , it solve on a act of levels and should not be watch through a undivided ideological lense . As many critic have already direct out , it is also laden with subtexts about stratum warfare and poverty .
Such thematic and allegoric complexness is increasingly rare , especially in an geological era of easy forgettable blockbusters - by - committee that sacrifice quirkiness to maximize global profits . But if the achiever of Snowpiercer is any indication , it fills a clear hungriness for entertainment target at the intellect and the mythic imaging .
Michael M. Hugheslives in Baltimore with his wife and two daughters . He drop a line fiction and nonfiction , and his new novelWitch Lightsis coming out in October . When he ’s not writing , Hughes perform as a mentalist ( psychical entertainer ) and verbalise on Fortean and extrasensory topics .
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