Films of the Collapse

Snowpiercer, The Rover, and Imagining Life After the End

“Knowing you can do something like that and no one comes after you. You do a thing like I did, that should really mean something. But it just doesn't matter anymore.”

-The Rover

Snowpiercer

Throughout this summer as the world falls apart — we are so screwed, for the record — I have been trying to watch more movies mostly to distract myself from the chaos and suffering going on. Part of that has been some thematic double or triple features, trying to see what pairs well or complements the other. And I'll be honest, most have been on kind of depressing topics. This past week I revisted a pair of underrated movies that in a way hit a bit too close to our times. They're 2014's Snowpiercer, from Oscar-winnner Bong Joon-ho and The Rover from David Michod (who you might know as the director who made Animal Kingdom). The two movies both touch on societal collapse, climate change and distrust and paranoia, and while they're dark, they are very good and the double feature makes for an interesting mediation on collapse.

I first saw both of these films in the spring and summer of 2014 while in Washington, D.C. Aside from immediately falling in love with both movies (they rank as top two films of that year), I was struck by the kind of shared message and themes in both films despite their wildly different styles. Each film imagines a grim future for humanity one-two decades after the geopolitical world as we know it falls apart. And from their own ends of the aesthetic spectrum and from how their approach their social commentary, each calls for an equitable world where everyone is taken care of.

The Rover is the more sparse of the two films but haunts you afer you see it. Ten years after an unspecified collapse, Eric (Guy Pearce, giving a performance so good I'm still mad he didn't get an Oscar nomination) is drinking in a desolate part of Australia when thieves steal his car. The film follows him chasing after for reasons made unclear until the end, with the journey showcasing a world left to deal with the long suffering of economic depression, government retreat and the extremes of climate change. The Rover is bleak, with sunwashed vistas, barren landscapes and overwhelming vastness as its reoccurring motifs. It's not a suspense film but the film's tone and pacing builds tension until you're gripping the edge of your seat waiting for someone to break.

Snowpiercer could not be more different in style. In an effort to reverse climate change, a chemical was unleashed across the globe, freezing the planet. The only people who survived were those who got a spot on Wilford's world-traversing train, the titular snowpiercer. Seventeen years later life continues, but a stark divide exists. Those in the front live a life of plenty, every need not only met but with excess. Those in the back are dirty, huddled masses, living off protein blocks and threatened at gunpoint by Wilford's security forces. Rebellions have been put down in the past, and at the start of life on the train, things were so bad the have-nots resorted to cannibalism. Whereas The Rover followed Eric and his accomplice-by-abduction, Rey (Robert Pattinson), Snowpiercer’s heroes are a close-knit bunch, through the shared lived experience of the cramped squalor of forced poverty. Sure, the logistics of the train's ecosystem and operation sort of fall apart when you stop to seriously think about it, but the world is fully formed, in great detail. The details in the grime and the muck on the tail enders is visceral. As the revolutionaries moved ever more forward through the train, the crowded steel cars give way to aquariums, bars and even raves. The colors start to pop, adding to the surrealness of the environment.

The Rover's world is less colorful. It depicts a near future where scarcity, xenophobia and economic collapse let governments become failed states and people traveling the world for food, resources and a promise of work. Rey and his brother Henry (Scoot McNairy) left the United States for Australia for “the mines” but slipped into banditry. Australian currency is not valuable in the country and people are regularly bartering or calculating exchanges. The army exists, but is doing aimless patrols in its own country. The only sign of power is a train loaded with resources, covered in Chinese text and guarded by heavily armed mercenaries in shorts.

Ahead of The Rover's release, the filmmakers even assembled an incredibly detailed timeline for the collapse on their website. Sadly it's no longer up, but it was terrifying in its vision of the coming years. Basically it's an extrapolation of so many socioeconomic and geopolitical trends in our own real world (minus a pandemic or two). Honestly, it's so plausible and rooted in our reality that it makes The Rover's dystopia more predictive than any other collapse movie out there, probably even more so than Children of Men.

At one point near the end of the movie, when forced to stop and reassess his actions, Pearce’s Eric admits to killing someone over a perceived betrayal. He's come to terms with the act, but what haunts him years later is the fact that he went unpunished. No one came for justice against him. Even the person he tells this to, who lords over him with a sense and nominal status of authority just doesn't care. Actions, as he reiterates throughout the film, should have consequences. And he remembers when they did.

That memory and longing for similar justice and equality permeates Snowpiercer. As Curtis (Chris Evans) and his crew move along the train and see the resources available, their anger is rooted in a sense that everyone could be okay, even comfortable, but a few chose to live in excess. But in the 17 years since the train started running, Wilford's unjust system is setting up the mechanisms for its own survival. In one of Snowpiercer's most striking and honestly unsettling moments (and this is a film with bug eating, dismemberment-via-axe and other grotesque scenes) the revolutionaries find a colorful classroom where children are indoctrinated by Wilford's minions into maintaining both the train's operations and the social strata. Curtis' revolution, even if the climax throws things for a lurch — in a genius way that says so much about ingrained power structures — is not about reversing fortunes for those on the train, but trying to bring true equality and ending oppression. Whereas The Rover longed for social cohesion and connectivity in a world where that broke down, Snowpiercer takes on what happens when a society doesn't even pay lip service to the idea of equity.

Neither of these are films whose world I want to see come true, although we are heading down the path of The Rover. These aren't exactly cheerful movies, but at least put clarity and perspective into what can happen to us and what we need to avoid. We can't let things get this bad, even if we're on track for it.

Today’s Panic Reading

There’s a good chance you’ve already read this or had someome recommend it to you, but I highly suggest you look at Ed Yong’s “How the Pandemic Defeated America,” a truly great (if depressing) deep dive into why the COVID-19 pandemic has gotten so bad.

Meanwhile, it continues to get worse. This Washington Post story looks how people are already suffering, being forced out of homes with no money.

The United States government is trying to link antifascist protesters (who, again, are anti fascist; fascists are the bad guys) to foreign militant groups, including ones who, you know, the United States was fighting alongside. Ken Klippenstein has the scoop.

Today’s Panic Music

Keeping with the dystopian aspect of this newsletter, here’s a favorite track of mine. Massive Attack’s haunting, rhythmic beats combined with Young Fathers’ hypnotic lyrics made this something that gets lodged in your brain.