11/01/24

Netflix

The story of the Andes ‘miracle’ plane crash is something I’ve been interested in since reading Piers Paul Reed’s book on the subject, when it was published just a couple of years after the event. Like a lot of people, I also watched Frank Marshall’s 1993 film, Alive, and thought he’d made a decent fist of it, given that the setting was mostly recreated using green screens, and that North American actors like Ethan Hawke and Vincent Spano took the main roles.

So I was initially surprised to learn that JA Bayona had, for a long time, been planning his own take on the story. For Society of the Snow, he also acts as co-screenwriter, using Pablo Vierci’s book of the same name as his source. He’s shot the film in Spanish and filmed much of the story in the actual location where the crash occurred, which must have presented a logistical nightmare for him and his team.

But I’ve loved Bayona’s previous work – The Orphanage and The Impossible are two particular highlights. So I popped a note in my mental diary, promising myself I’d watch it on the big screen at my earliest opportunity. But of course, this is a Netflix production, afforded a limited theatrical release from the 22nd December, a time when I would be far from a cinema, which is why I eventually settle (once again) for watching it on streaming.

Two hours and twenty-four minutes later, I’m a blubbering wreck and fully aware that, if I’d managed to see this when it first came out, it would have been one of my top ten films of 2023, no question.

The film opens in October 1972, when a team of young rugby players, together with members of their family and some friends and supporters, are preparing to climb merrily aboard a charter plane in their home town of Montevideo, Uruguay. They are planning to make the relatively short flight across the Andes to Santiago, Chile, where they are due to play a match. But things go disastrously wrong and – in one of the most brutal and horrifying sequences I’ve seen in a long while – crashes onto a remote mountainside. 

Three crew members and nine passengers die in the impact and, for the twenty-three survivors, there’s the awful realisation that they are trapped in sub-zero temperatures, with no source of heating and just a few scraps of food foraged from suitcases.

Hopes of rescue soon fade as the planes searching for them fail to spot a trace of wreckage in the thick snow. The survivors hear a heartbreaking radio broadcast: the search has been called off until the spring. A dreadful  realisation begins to set in. They are going to have to try to survive until the weather improves. Meanwhile, they are horribly aware that the only source of nutrition available to them is the frozen bodies of their friends and family, lying just a short distance from the plane’s fuselage…

Society of the Snow is a powerful and thought-provoking account of humanity’s impulse to survive, told in unflinching detail, but it is never allowed to become merely the horror story that the media is so keen to promote (try to find an account of the story that doesn’t trumpet the word ‘cannibal’). On the contrary, it’s a testament to the team spirit of the young men who manage to keep themselves alive and motivated in that wilderness for seventy-two days, never accepting their fate, even when nature seems intent on sending them to their doom at every opportunity. 

The story is told from the point of view of Numa (Enzo Vogrincic), a charismatic young lawyer, who is instrumental in inspiring his friend, Nando (Augustin Pardella), to step up and become the team’s leader. That said, this is very much an ensemble piece, with every actor performing their respective roles to with convincing authenticity. There are some heartbreaking exchanges between the survivors and it’s at these moments that the screen in front of me keeps blurring as my eyes fill with tears.

Amidst the bleakness of the story, Pedro Luque’s exquisite cinematography explores the majesty of the location and Michael Gicchino’s score provides an emotive backdrop to the suffering and the eventual hard-won triumph of rescue. This is an immersive film in every sense of the word and watching it makes me fully appreciate the hardship and suffering that the protagonists experienced, but their refusal to capitulate to the slings and arrows that assail them is also inspiring.

Some of the films on Netflix can be underwhelming, but Society of the Snow is an extraordinary achievement and confirmation, if ever it were needed, that Bayona is an exceptional talent. Don’t miss it.

5 stars

Philip Caveney