“Keep Hope Alive,” the fifth episode in season two of Snowpiercer, is a timely message in the middle of this dark winter. Passengers on the train are desperate for hope but fearing all will fall apart, a not dissimilar mood to real life at the moment.
Will the train barreling through the icy future world be the beginning of a new era for humanity or will humanity succumb to its’ meanness and hatred and destroy itself before the slight hope of a new future be realized?
That’s a question present in every episode of Snowpiercer’s season 2, and it’s never been more relevant.
Here’s what I pondered after watching “Keep Hope Alive:”
1. The Children Are the Future
There are a small number of children on this train but at least there’s enough to fill a classroom, including Miles, Layton and Josie’s adopted child. Miles appeared in the last episode as he bid a tearful good-bye to his mother. In this episode, his classmates create a mural of Melanie planting a flag on an inhabitable Earth.
The next generation is buying into the hope that Melanie provided. Layton and Zarah seem to be buying into hope as well, as they view ultrasounds of their child. Is it the future? Or will the child and their parents end in violence too?
Outside the classroom, another child, Alex, is in the teenage rebellious phase, this time directing snark at Wilford for continuing to play Audrey’s album for days on end. Alex is still torn between her mother and father, between the familiar and the one who got away.
Then there’s our little Tailie runner, a pint-size encapsulation of the rebellion, who’s being used to shoulder the big responsibility of running messages from Josie in Big Alice to Layton on Snowpiercer. She’s still locked in the struggle and seems to have given up childhood altogether.
These children’s futures depend on the choices between hope and fear and violence and cooperation.
2. The Parents Are Not All Right
This season is all about parental struggle.
Wilford is clearly the toxic parent not just for the train as a whole but for Alex individually. Like all toxic parents, it’s hard to break away from his attention. And, yet, he’s clearly willing to sacrifice his “children” to further his goals. They’re extensions, tools for him to use. In “Keep Hope Alive,” Wilford sacrifices his loyal Breachmen as part of a false flag operation to blame Layton for the massacre.
Other parents risk their lives for their children. Melanie, of course, went on a suicide mission to provide hope to the next generation. Josie is enduring unbearable pain to protect others, especially Miles.
And Layton? He’s somewhere in the middle, isn’t he?
He’s the counter to Wilford, a moral parent against a toxic one. But not all his choices are good. What does it say about Layton that he asks Pike to take out Terrance, the drug dealer who threatened to reveal the spy operation to Wilford? Layton not only orders the death of a passenger but he also orders another to kill. Pike and Layton call each other brothers. But it’s not a healthy familial relationship. After the killing, Pike shaves his head, a sign of transformation.
The final parental figure is, Ruth. I’ve been suspicious of her character all season, given the love she seemed to have for Wilford. But the episode offers a more benevolent Ruth. She trains Zarah in hospitality. She assumes the Voice of the train to calm passengers, a motherly soothing of fears, even though she’s lying through her teeth.
Ruth agrees to the little white lie that Melanie’s still in contact with the weather balloons being released to keep that hope alive. Is it the right choice? Are any of them? That remains to be seen.
3. Red is the color of the episode.
I haven’t said much about the cinematography of Snowpiercer. There are the sweeping vistas outside, of course, but the surroundings are about how the train cars reflect certain characters In “Keep Hope Alive,” the color red takes center stage, tying several elements together.
In the medical lab, Josie is consumed with pain until Icy Bob tells her to concentrate and count the red objects around her. Shift the pain to the outside, he recommends. Josie does, allowing her to overhear the mad scientists and learn more about Wilford’s plan. Her whole world seems gray now, save for those pops of blood red.
Continued belowMeanwhile, Audrey wears a smoking hot red dress to her “date” with Wilford aboard Big Alice. As she walks toward her possible doom, her heels step on the “W” symbol. How much blood will be shed as a result of this visit? Red shows up again in the buttons that control communications between Snowpiercer and Big Alice, a panel Audrey promised to rewire.
The blood itself flows this episode too, in the battle between Pike and Terrance, in the boxing between Till and the Reverand, and in the deaths of the Breachmen.
4. Till continues to flail.
Till made a critical decision that put her on the side of the rebellion last season and she’s been paying for it ever since. She’s been punishing herself, devolving until all that’s left is a bundle of nerves ready to explode.
She and the Reverand “spar” this episode. I say “spar” but it was more them trying to actually hurt each other in a boxing match. The Reverand has a whole spiel about how pain is needed in order to find relief as he drives Till to the floor. She recovers and tries to do the same to him. This is not a friendly match.
The Reverand wants to make Till doubt her choices. But is she listening to his words or attempting to worm her way into his mind? I’m not sure even she knows.
5. What Rebecca Can Tell Us About Wilford
In a weird parody of a book club, Wilford brings in a group to his lofty headquarters to discuss Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. In the Wilford book club, you’re allowed to have opinions but they better be the right ones. What are the wrong opinions? You won’t know until you voice them.
Rebecca a novel about a man who charms a younger woman, brings her home, and drops her into a situation where she seems to have little control. Scenes in the book include someone encouraging suicide, as Kevin was encouraged to do in an earlier episode of the show. In the book, the husband eventually confesses to killing his first wife, who turns out to have been a manipulative woman. Or so they say. There are obvious parallels to how Wilford sees his relationship with Melanie, an older man who “courts” a younger woman, who turns out to be manipulative enough that she deserves death. But it could also be read to be a parallel to his relationship to Audrey or even Alex.
In other words, Rebecca is a book about a man who justifies terrible and violent choices, including murdering his first wife and manipulating his second, by claiming to love and care for them.
I hope no one mentions this to Wilford in the discussion. I fear that would not end well for them.
