Snowpiercer Is Already Appealing For Oscar Consideration

By Nick Venable | Published 10 years ago

As movie releases go, it’s hard to think of a film that dealt with as many obstacles as Bong Joon-jo’s mesmerizing thriller Snowpiercer, which still has not seen by as many people as it should have been. (Thanks a lot, Harvey Weinstein, you mope.) The Snowpiercer oddities continue, though in a more positive light, now that Radius has preemptively jumped into Oscar season by mailing out “For Your Consideration” screeners to all Academy voters. They probably should have just released the film this way in the first place.

Though television’s awards season just ended Monday with the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards, film is beginning its critical dominance over the rest of the year on the way to the 87th Academy Awards next year. Had The Weinstein Company actually given enough of a shit about Snowpiercer to present it in the best way possible, they would have put it on last year’s festival circuit heading into the 2014 Oscar race. But no, American audiences had to wait until it got pissed into a limited theatrical run and VOD release. Luckily, the film has received almost universal praise from critics all over the world—and is still holding onto a 95% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes—so its chances at running a train on the Oscars aren’t completely in vain.

According to Deadline, Radius is touting several categories for voters to think about. They want Bong up for Best Director and Best Screenplay, the latter of which would be shared with Kelly Masterson. And while we can assume cinematography, sound, and effects will also be considered, I’m thinking the definite lock will be Tilda Swinton for Best Supporting Actress. Because COME ON, she was insanely amazing, as well as amazingly insane.

Radius has a bit of confidence, having put forth this year’s Best Documentary Feature, the background singer story 20 Feet from Stardom. (They’re also promoting the jazzy doc Keep on Keepin’ On for next year.) But so far, the Snowpiercer screeners seem to be the only ones floating around.

It’s all quite strange, considering it looked like Snowpiercer would spend more time beneath a rug than in front of people’s eyes. When the South Korea native Bong first announced he’d be making his English-language debut, it had cinema fans going wild, since movies like The Host and Memories of Murder earned him international acclaim. And then Harvey Weinstein started running his mouth about America being too dumb to grasp the film in its entirety and started talking about making huge edits and adding voiceover exposition. None of that ended up happening, but it still got shafted as far as a wide release was concerned.

It’ll be around five months until the nominees for the 2015 Oscars get here, so here’s hoping voters haven’t already forgotten about Snowpiercer by then. We may just have to start a revolution.

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