SOCIETY OF THE SNOW - Mark Reviews Movies

Society of the Snow, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 21, 2023

For more than 50 years now, the story of the plane crash in the Andes, which stranded 33 initial survivors of a 45-person flight on a frozen and lifeless glacier surrounded by tall peaks, has haunted, fascinated, and horrified people. Apart from the near-miraculous survival of 16 people at the end of 72-day ordeal, there's one reason, perhaps, for the story's longevity: how those survivors were able to live, despite the environment and the lack of food.

If you somehow don't know that key piece of information, it's probably best to stop reading now—although the number of books, movies, other pieces of media, and assorted references (including some off-color jokes) that have been made about the event make ignorance of that detail seem unlikely. If everyone had died in the crash and in its aftermath or survived by some chance of fate that made traditional nourishment plentiful, the story would have come and gone, only to be forgotten eventually.

Instead, we have to face the unthinkable when reflecting on the 1972 story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. Those who survived the crash, their injuries, the shock of the unforgiving climate of the Andes in winter, and the depletion of every piece of food that could be scavenged from the fuselage and luggage had to confront an unthinkable option that became a necessity. If they wanted to live, they would have to eat the flesh of the dead.

What's fascinating about co-writer/director J.A. Bayona's Society of the Snow, an adaptation of the book by Pablo Vierci, is that it doesn't linger on the sheer horror of that choice, despite how sensationalistic that detail has become and easily could become in any depiction of the true story. The film puts these characters—and, in witnessing these events in graphic and disturbing detail, us, to an extent—through so much punishment, into so many situations of hopelessness or false hope, and into a state of despair so deep that cannibalism is simultaneously just another awful setback and another necessity for survival.

At a certain point, morality means little or nothing, and by the time the subject of eating the dead arises, some have reached that point in the cold, with their bodies failing them, and with no apparent chance of aid or rescue on the horizon. Eventually, everyone else will arrive at that point, too. What other choice is there? There isn't one, and this film makes that hard fact as clear as possible.

The film is, then, a grueling experience and one that forces us to grapple with questions we probably don't want to ask of ourselves. It's not rewarding or uplifting in the way some generically inspirational story of survival might be, because there's little reward for the people in this story except the ultimate one: that they get to live another day, even if it is amidst such constant difficulty, with the anxiety and fear of death always lingering in the background, and with such a heavy burden of conscience to bear—if not now, then later, if they even live to carry it.

The focal point here is Numa Turcatti (Enzo Vogrincic), who is on the flight to accompany players on an amateur rugby team from Montevideo. The team has a match scheduled in Santiago, and they've chartered the flight—filled with themselves and supporters and friends and family members—to take them over the Andes into neighboring Chile.

The sequence of the crash is terrifying, as one would expect in general, but it's Bayona's attention to the specific details that makes it more so than we might anticipate. There's a practical reason for showing what happens to both the plane and its occupants, as the tail section of the small aircraft breaks off without warning, sending passengers and luggage flying out the gaping void, and the impact of the landing unleashes the rows of seats, shoving people forward and their limbs to the point of breaking. So much of the film is about the limits of the human body—what it can endure in terms of injury, pain, malnutrition and starvation, and the physical effects of mental deterioration. The grisly events of the crash make that idea immediate and visceral.

As such, the story itself doesn't possess characters, who we come to understand as individuals, so much as it shows bodies, while providing a broad sense of shared humanity. We learn some of their names, such as our narrator Numa (whose role as the voice for the survivors takes an unexpected turn) and some members of the team, such as Nando Parrado (Agustín Pardella) and Roberto Canessa (Matís Recalt). Other faces and/or names become familiar, too, and that, perhaps, is all the screenplay (written by Bayona, Bernat Vilaplana, Jaime Marques-Olearraga, and Nicolás Casariego) requires for us to sympathize with ordinary people trapped in extraordinarily dire circumstances.

The film recounts all of it—from the survivors making shelter in the remnants of the fuselage and stacks of suitcases, to a plan to repair the plane's radio, to some team members preparing to climb the mountain in order to search for the tail and signs of civilization, to, yes, that decision to eat the dead instead of succumbing to starvation. It's harrowing, to understate the effect of so many trials and so much despair, but Society of the Snow tells this story with bluntness, thoughtfulness, and respect, not only for those who lived, but also for the sacrifices of both the living and the dead.

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