MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING
FANS OF TILDA SWINTON’S BIZARRE ROLES WILL NOT WANT TO MISS THIS TRAIN
{BY AL HOFF} What hath Citizens United wrought? That’s the central question explored in Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s documentary Citizen Koch, about the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that, among other things, opened a path for huge amounts of private money to be funneled, often without explicit disclosure, into political campaigns.
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“Reagan Republican” and registered nurse Dee Ives works to recall Gov. Walker.
By way of example, the filmmakers focus on Wisconsin in the wake of Republican Scott Walker’s 2010 election to governor, and his early decision to take on public-sector unions. On one side, various outraged nurses, prison guards and schoolteachers, armed with sit-ins, poster-board signs and leaflets; on the other, extraordinarily wealthy and well-connected businessmen, like the state’s Koch brothers, who generously funded “advocacy” groups like Americans for Prosperity. Much of the film centers on the movement to recall Walker, but the filmmakers also spend time on Buddy Roemer’s quixotic presidential campaign. (Needless to say, now is not a good time in American politics to run against candidates with huge cash piles from corporations, or to refuse to accept such donations.) And running throughout the Walker/unions battle is the dismay of lifelong Republicans, who as ordinary citizens, feel their interests are subsumed by those of mega-donors. If you’re a policy nerd, plenty of Citizen Koch will be familiar to you, but the film is a good précis of a tumultuous time in American politics, a series of rifts and adjustments that is still ongoing. And if the film feels like something one might watch on, say, Frontline, you’re not wrong. The filmmakers claim that the film was being developed for PBS, but that interference from David Koch, who is a major donor to the network, resulted in the withdrawal of funding. The film was subsequently funded partly through a Kickstarter campaign, in perhaps a victory for the little guys. Starts Sat., July 12. Harris AHOFF@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
CORRECTION In last week’s article “Next Steps,” about the film Progression, the name of actor Alex Falberg was misspelled. City Paper regrets the error.
TRAIN IN VAIN Life aboard the Snowpiercer: “Know your place, keep your place”
{BY AL HOFF}
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NOWPIERCER may be the first dys-
topic film to explore the genre’s requisite privations, violence, class struggles, lost humanity and flickering hope, all aboard a single train. Bong Joon-ho’s action thriller is adapted from a French graphic novel, and marks his English-language debut. (Bong helmed 2007’s superior monster movie The Host.) The titular train holds the only humans left after a 2014 attempt to fix climate change went awry and plunged the planet into an ice age. Now, 17 years later, the train still circumnavigates the globe, propelled by a perpetual-motion engine, while the ragged underclass in the train’s tail plans to storm to the front and gain control of the engine. Most plots are linear, but perhaps no more so than here, in which the action begins at the rear of the train and moves forward car by car, in more or less real time. As each new car is breached, neither the rebels nor the viewers know what lies behind the door — an administrative car,
like where the protein bars are made, or another glimpse at the life of leisure and even decadence that the privileged lead? Normally, the distance between the have-nots and the haves is illustrated with a pyramid, as there are many more on the bottom and few on top. Snowpiercer plots this disparity on a line, where
SNOWPIERCER DIRECTED BY: Bong Joon-ho STARRING: Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Tilda Swinton AMC Loews and SouthSide Works In English, and some Korean, with subtitles
CP APPROVED each class shares a similar amount of space, and it’s also an effective visual: Hundreds of poor are crammed into one cage-like train car, while the man in charge is alone in his well-appointed carriage. Bong further underscores this with his palette: The rebels’ journey begins in
a washed-out monochrome murk and grows increasingly more colorful and light-filled. Like the passengers, all the film’s action is confined to the narrow space of a train, creating a visceral claustrophobia, even in the fancy cars. There are occasional shots from outside the train that show the breathtaking snowy horror that is our planet — from forbidding mountain ranges to former cities collapsed into icy piles. Fans of Tilda Swinton’s bizarre roles will not want to miss this train: A nearly unrecognizable Swinton portrays a matronly, propaganda-spewing liaison, and her performance is darkly funny as well as chilling. Snowpiercer also proffers a lot of intriguing explorations of heroics, societal order and the usefulness of revolution, but at the risk of spoiling plot twists, you’ll have to claw your way to the end of the film to fully appreciate them. It’s a journey worth taking. A H OF F @ P G HC I T Y PA P E R. C OM
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