Despite their surface differences, Circle and Train to Busan basically ask the same question: What happens when you put a set of strangers in a dangerous situation and ask them to choose between selfishness and thinking beyond themselves?
They even have similar endgames. Both of them come down to a lone male balancing his needs against that of a child and a pregnant woman.
In spite of those similarities, it feels as though they approach the question with very different attitudes.
Circle, to me, feels almost agnostic in its approach. It shows you what the characters choose, but never passes judgement. Nor, does it seem to have a conclusive answer. Is selfishness better than altruism? Maybe. It seems to say, perhaps there's even no way to be sure.
Train to Busan, on the other hand, takes a stand. Not only does it say that selflessness is better than selfishness, it says that selfish people are actually in the minority, and that most people, most of the time, will do their best to help one another. It also touches on the possibility of learning to care and that change is possible.
So are these movies arguing? Is one of them right and the other wrong? Is one work true and good and the other amoral? Conversely, is one of them honest and truthful and the other mawkishly sentimental?
To me. they don't necessarily contradict each other.Which brings me to the biggest difference between the moral problem set up in Circle and the one in Train to Busan.
And that difference comes down to context and consequences.
In Train to Busan, both the viewer and the characters have a lot more information and can see the problem from a wider lens. They have a much better sense of context.
Furthermore, their decisions are subject to natural consequences. The choices they make play out to their inevitable conclusion.
Circle, however, is an unknown and artificial situation. Because it is unknown, neither the viewers, nor the characters have any sense of context. And because it is artificial, the natural sequence of cause-and-effect is replaced the the rules of the game.
I make different decisions in a game of Call of Duty or Candyland or a laboratory psych experiment because I am constrained by context. I don't manage my finances like I do in Monopoly, and I don't drive a vehicle like I do in Grand Theft Auto because I understand natural consequences.
That said, there are situations in real life when both context and potential consequences are unclear or ambiguous. Or there are times we have to weigh the known against the unknown. We are neither as knowledgeable as the passengers on the Train to Busan or as ignorant as the strangers standing in Circle. In such cases, neither movie can tell us what to do.
We can only take the best parts from each, and do the best we can.
