I recently watched Snowpiercer and you should too. It’s the most visionary and visually stunning movie I have seen since Inception. I found the concept of this crammed train, although rather a fantasy than science fiction concept, agreat idea to dramatize current conflicts.

But it was a reminder of Carl Sagan’s „Pale Blue Dot“ that made me connect the dots of the mind-blowing scope of Snowpiercer’s vision. „Pale Blue Dot“ is a text Sagan wrote commenting on a photo the Voyager robot took of Earth looking back from beyond Neptune. It is a simple, beautiful and humbling. Here it is: (transcript here)

Here is how you have to understand Snowpiercer and it’s allegories: Snowpiercer is real.

It exists. There is a vehicle that is racing through an ice-cold, inhabitable environment making a cycle once a year. It’s called Earth.

We are on it, crammed together and we cannot leave this planet. Our ressources are limited and we have structures in place that put people in the back and up the front. And we also believe and do so many things we know to be wrong, because we are told it is necessary to keep the train running. Snowpiercer thematizes everything from child labor to numbing drugs, leaders who see no alternative etc.

Snowpiercer is not a fantasy vehicle to create a situation for drama, it is a focused view at the human condition today on this planet.