Thread by @fozmeadows

I just finished rewatching Train to Busan and I am very In My Feelings about how goddamn flawless it is. The entire thing functions as a critique of classism and the importance of community, empathy and selflessness over individual survivalism, and I fucking love it.

The opening shot shows us a mechanised traffic warden alerting oncoming cars to slow down for quarantine by waving its arm up and down,then cuts to a real human performing the more complex task of actually flagging & speaking to drivers - a contrast of real humanity vs facsimile.

Following this, there's a continuing focus throughout the film on shots of people's hands - notably those of the protagonist Seok-woo & his daughter, Su-an, but also those of other characters - emphasising the difference between creation & connection and destructive zombie claws.

There's also a mirror-game going on in the characterisation of Seok-woo vs that of Yon-suk, the selfish COO of the railway company. Yon-suk is a dark mirror of Seok-woo's averted future: the man he might've become without this crisis and the intervention of his daughter.

The two are paralleled often: most notably the moment when Seok-woo initially tries to keep two people from their carriage out of fear of infection, but relents at Su-an's request, vs Yon-suk doing the same to their party later, with a deliberate shot of him ignoring Su-an.

Over and over again, the film shows how destructive Yon-suk's selfish form of survivalism is. Driven by fear, his actions lead directly to the deaths of others, but do not save him in the end: a deliberate irony, as he runs the railway - the cinematic world - the others rely on.

Yon-suk's characterisation is a clear classist rebuke of powerful people who value themselves first at the expense of others. Early on, he tells Su-an not to be like the homeless man who hides on the train; but whereas the homeless man later saves Su-an, Yon-suk nearly kills her.

The film also rebukes those who obey others or act mindlessly, not only through the zombies themselves, but through Seok-woo's underlings - listed in his phone as lemmings - and the sheeplike actions of the conductor & other passengers who give in to Yon-suk's fearmongering.

Every time Seok-woo acts similarly to Yon-suk, the film rebukes him via Su-an. When she gives up her seat to an elderly woman, Seok-woo tells her not to be so good to others in a crisis, to put herself first; she replies by comparing the woman to her granny, Seok-woo's mother.

(This is another point of contrast with Yon-suk, who in his final, infected moments confesses his want to reach his mother, who is waiting for him; likewise Seok-woo had lived with his mother, a touchstone of empathy for Su-an, who he earlier heard die over the phone.)

Returning to the elderly woman, travelling with her sister - both now & on my first viewing, I felt powerfully that the two are meant as a thematic nod to the complex history of the two Koreas, particularly as they are separated by a twisted, infected soldier falling between them

The elder sister dresses plainly, is humble & thoughtful, trying to look out for her haughtier, more fancily dressed younger sister, who at one point, when the zombies are still thought of as rioters, mentions that "in the old days, they would've been reeducated."

After being separated by the soldier, the sisters get a parting glimpse of each other as Yon-suk tries to stop Seok-woo & the other survivors entering his carriage; when they finally break in pursued by zombies, the elder sister smiles & sacrifices herself to save the others.

The younger (but still elderly) sister, stricken by this, dissociates herself from Yon-suk & the others, who have overlooked her. She watches her zombie-sister through the door, touches the glass - an echoed gesture - and opens the door to let in carnage as vengeance.

By the end of the film, the lone survivors are Su-an and the pregnant Seong-kyong, having reached Busan due to a cycle of empathy: their own towards others - it's Seong-kyong who points out Seok-woo was initially selfish b/c of fear - and of others towards them.

There's definitely a women-and-children-first flavour to their survival, but in this context, it's not remotely chauvinist: it's old-school human survival, an acknowledgement that children are the future that needs protecting, and that they are what must be saved.

(This is likewise paralleled again between Yon-suk & Seok-woo: whereas the former throws a teenage girl to the zombies to try and save himself, Seok-woo ultimately dives from the train when infected to protect Su-an and Seung-kyeong.)

And then, the perfect gracenote to a story about how classism poisons survival, the necessity of children for a future and the vital importance of empathy: the significance of Su-an's song.

At the start of the film, Seok-woo is a distracted, divorced father, too busy at work to attend Su-an's class recital. He watches a video of her starting a song but failing to complete it. She later tells him she practised it for him and couldn't sing because he wasn't there.

In the film's final scene, a shellshocked Su-an & Seong-kyeong stagger through a railway tunnel towards soldiers who, at a distance, cannot distinguish their shuffling from that of zombies. Their orders are to shoot them if they cannot verify their humanity.

And then, through her sobs, Su-an finally finishes the song meant for her now-dead father - he told her early on to always finish what she starts - and the music, amplified by the tunnel, proves their humanity to the soldiers. Because you need *culture* to be human, too.

FIN.