The Engine Room In Wilford's The Curtis Revolution
The Curtis Revolution eventually reaches its destination at the engine room, where the leader and inventor, Wilford, resides and dictates everything that happens in his train. Though the engine room may initially appear as a sanctum of power and control, Bong Joon-ho once again manipulates color, camera angles, and the actual symbol of the engine in order to illustrate the engine room as ominously similar to the tail section. With the motif of an unfairly ordered train, Joon-ho achieves an enlightening revelation about Snowpiercer's system as a whole, as the immoralities of its capitalist social structure are fully exposed along with the train's entire length. Joon-ho addresses the humanistic qualities of the lower and higher class through
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Propaganda in the education car indoctrinates children from a young age to believe that the engine is eternal, with songs lyrics like: "rumble rumble, rattle rattle, it will never die! What happens if the engine stops? We all freeze and die!" (Snowpiercer 1:09:44). The scene of the engine room, however, reveals that the engine itself is the opposite of what all the propaganda entails; instead of an eternal preserver, the engine is a regular machine that requires manual labor when it breaks. This labor is provided by none other than the small children of the tail sectioners, who are taken against their will to replace the broken parts of the engine. The process is horrifying to witness, as the audience must see the tail child, Timmy, be forced into a cramped compartment underneath the engine room and transformed into a cog of the engine. Wilford explains his reasoning for exploiting innocent kids very nonchalantly by saying “oh, the space only allows for [...] young children under five” (Snowpiercer 1:50:53). Essentially, the use of children as a mechanical part represents the ultimate form of dehumanization in the film.
Joon-ho is able to show this dehumanization through his use of a close-up camera angle. Close-ups can create the specific effect of "objectification," or the process of turning a human into an object, when zooming in on parts of the human body (Frost 158). For the engine scene, Joon-ho uses a close-up camera angle to frame and isolate the child's hand from the rest of his body, thereby effectively objectifying Timmy as less than a human being -- only a hand exploited for the labor it provides (Snowpiercer
Propaganda in the education car indoctrinates children from a young age to believe that the engine is eternal, with songs lyrics like: "rumble rumble, rattle rattle, it will never die! What happens if the engine stops? We all freeze and die!" (Snowpiercer 1:09:44). The scene of the engine room, however, reveals that the engine itself is the opposite of what all the propaganda entails; instead of an eternal preserver, the engine is a regular machine that requires manual labor when it breaks. This labor is provided by none other than the small children of the tail sectioners, who are taken against their will to replace the broken parts of the engine. The process is horrifying to witness, as the audience must see the tail child, Timmy, be forced into a cramped compartment underneath the engine room and transformed into a cog of the engine. Wilford explains his reasoning for exploiting innocent kids very nonchalantly by saying “oh, the space only allows for [...] young children under five” (Snowpiercer 1:50:53). Essentially, the use of children as a mechanical part represents the ultimate form of dehumanization in the film.
Joon-ho is able to show this dehumanization through his use of a close-up camera angle. Close-ups can create the specific effect of "objectification," or the process of turning a human into an object, when zooming in on parts of the human body (Frost 158). For the engine scene, Joon-ho uses a close-up camera angle to frame and isolate the child's hand from the rest of his body, thereby effectively objectifying Timmy as less than a human being -- only a hand exploited for the labor it provides (Snowpiercer