A second watch of Snowpiercer really only deepened my appreciation of the film, even while I acknowledge even more its flaws. I can completely understand, having seen it a couple of times, what Harvey Weinstein was thinking with his desire to edit the film; with about 15-20 minutes of trim, Snowpiercer would be a lot more commercially viable, and its streamlining would probably help the film be more "successful". But it would also lose a lot of weirdness that gives the film its personality, and in making it more "successful," it would also be a hell of a lot more boring and conventional. What I love about Snowpiercer is its willingness to follow its muse to odd places and include sections that don't necessarily need to be there. There are scenes that could be cut, tonal shifts that could be smoothed, and you could probably edit down some of the monologues at the end. But all you would be doing is cutting out the touches of life that make Snowpiercer so engaging for me as a cinephile. Maybe it comes with the territory when you watch as many movies as I do, but I've gotten to where I like things that can't be easily pigeonholed, and in its current state, Snowpiercer is a gloriously ambitious blend of science-fiction allegory, action film, Terry Gilliam-esque dystopia, and Marxist theory, all seasoned with equal parts comedy, horror, melodrama, and political theory. And for as much as I'm saying you could trimSnowpiercer into something more commercially viable, I don't think there's that much that genuinelyshould be cut. I think the film gains from its ambitions and its willingness to experiment, and I think it benefits the final product as something that feels unmistakably like a personal statement, big budget and all. So I'll still concede that Snowpiercer isn't ever going to be a mainstream success, and that it's uneven. But I'll also still argue that I love it a hell of a lot, it excited me and thrilled me more than just about any mainstream big budget film I can think of in recent memory, and I wouldn't change a bit of it.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe
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