Snowpiercer is shaping up to be the sleeper success of 2014. But no one has yet commented on one of the film's most unusual subtexts — its direct allusions to Gnosticism, the ancient Christian belief system that was damned by the Roman Church as heretical and virtually extinguished by the 5^th century.

Despite its obscurity, Gnosticism still exerts a profound, if seldom acknowledged, influence on the 21^st century popular imagination. Like the Matrix trilogy and The Truman Show before it,Snowpiercer is a Gnostic allegory par excellence.

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