Of the various literary, television and film adaptations of the 1972 Andes plane crash and survival story, director and co-screenwriter J.A Bayona’s Society of the Snow is seemingly the first to recreate the incident in such accurate detail, with a cast composed entirely of Argentine and Uruguayan actors. A shoddy Mexican film from 1976 (which some accused of simply cashing in on the tragedy) and an Ethan Hawke-led American film from 1993 are the only two feature narrative attempts at tackling the gruesome tale, in which a chartered flight from Uruguay to Chile, carrying a rugby team and their friends and family, was misdirected by the novice co-pilot causing a crash in the Andes mountains. Of the 45 passengers, only 16 survived; many died at the time of crash, while others froze to death or succumbed to wounds. The rest were forced—like the Yellowjackets TV characters their story eventually inspired—to feast upon the dead in order to survive, a task made all the more morally tormenting by most of the team’s steadfast Christianity.
Before watching Society of the Snow, I was attracted by the choice of Bayona at the helm. A Spanish director who has successfully worked in the horror genre, albeit not in many years, I thought he would be an apt fit. I wanted a director who would not sensationalize the miracle of survival and the endurance of the human spirit like I assume was the case with Alive—the Hawke-led film made and produced by close associates of Steven Spielberg—while not necessarily exploiting the disaster for all its many gory details. I wanted a film which articulated exactly what Bayona managed with a line at Society of the Snow’s close, about how the survivors were just as dead as the bodies buried under the frozen ground or torn apart until nothing but bones remained. The real-life horror depicted is incredibly raw, but the filmmaker takes pains (to some detriment) to remind you of the humanity of the dead—that they were once more than crushed bodies, maimed limbs and infected extremities. You feel the weight of the massive plane as we descend into the snow along with the passengers, and the desperation of the survivors as their humanity only becomes more prominent the more it seems to be taken from them. The tragedy of the crash and of the 72 days endured by those who—through sheer force of will—managed to survive, was real, and had incredibly real consequences.
Prior to the crash, Society of the Snow spends some time with the young members of the rugby team, briefly acquainting us with their personalities, their relationships to one another, the girls they like, the things that they hope for the future. Most are men in their early 20s with their entire lives ahead of them, but as our narrator, Numa (Enzo Vogrincic Roldán) explains of their imminent wintry prison: “This is a place where life is impossible.”
An honest miscalculation by the novice co-pilot, who perished shortly after the plane touched ground, was behind the tragic detour into the Andes. It stranded the men and their companions for two months after the 10-day mandated search turned up no trace of their survival. Yet the men are resourceful and smart even as the terrain surrounding them yearns for their deaths. When light leaves the eyes or new bodies are discovered, subtitles emerge on-screen with names and ages to remind us of what was taken. It’s a somewhat overbearing nudge to not dramatize their misfortune while the film is unavoidably indulging in just that. Bayona and co. want to have their cake and eat it too: Depict unrelenting, real-life suffering without exploitation. The two things can’t help but go hand-in-hand. But it respects the dead far more to show the ugliness of how things played out, rather than soften it with schmaltzy Hollywood sheen, and it bears repeating that the dead were once more than just stony blue-faced actors.
As meager rations disappear, starvation grabs hold and bodies begin to decay (a visualization of black urine, a color I was unaware urine could attain, is deeply unsettling). The reality of the situation sets in: The corpses of friends and family will have to become food. The moral quandary for the team is perhaps more strident than it would be for others; specifically, they are the Old Christians Club rugby union team, and an earlier scene in church depicts how religion is central to most of their lives. Health subsequently improves with their reluctant means of nourishment, though many refuse at first. But the retrieval of a radio and the revelation that the search for them has ended leaves them with no other option if they wish for a fighting chance. They must decide what their own lives are worth to the dead, and in the eyes of God.
Bayona’s interpretation of the events of the crash is brutal but suitably restrained—it suggests that he shows us only what he absolutely has to. All the actors are quite impressive at conveying the truth of their fictional anguish, and the two most difficult scenes to watch are the crash—specifically, when the cabin seats barrel forward and bodies become crushed, limbs breaking askew—and the merciless avalanche and escape sequences. The latter combine unbearable claustrophobia with the already excruciating cold and misery. And, all this directly following a scene in which the friends bond in a rare moment of elevated spirits, it even feels a bit cruel. Society of the Snow is, by nature, inseparable from a certain arena of exploitation, but Bayona’s familiarity with horror (his The Orphanage is fantastic) makes him a well-suited match for the subject material. Disaster is horror, and Bayona’s direction allows for a deeper comprehension of a tragedy that exists beyond our grasp.
In spite of the feel-good outcome for the survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, and the long-standing perceived miracle of their persistence, Society of the Snow is not a feel-good film. It is, in part, about the limits of faith and the strength of the human spirit under unimaginable conditions. One man in particular, Nando (Agustín Pardella), who loses his sister and fails to regain consciousness until days after the crash, was poised to perish yet progressively regains his strength as the days slog onward. Nando becomes the group’s savior, the one who leads the charge to conquer the mountain which separates the remains of the crash from the fertile ground of Chile, and he trains himself over time to complete the impossible task without proper clothes or equipment. Another survivor, Javier (Esteban Bigliardi), explains in the aftermath of his wife Lillian’s death from a cataclysmic avalanche, that her death and his love for her did not extinguish his will to live, but ignited his desire to carry that love home to their children. So too the loss of Susana, Nando’s sister, instills in him an unquenchable purpose.
But again, nothing about this feels very good; it isn’t meant to. Numa’s narration (another overbearing filmmaking choice) closes out Society of the Snow, presenting an admirably bleak perspective on the whole affair. But it’s a thoughtful perspective that sits in contrast to what the world, what the news cameras, and likely what the film industry once saw: A group of strong, virile heroes who fought against their own odds and overcame unthinkable adversity. A beacon of hope in a cruel world that seems undaunted in its quest to break our spirits. But the reality is that their spirits were broken. They were weak, desperate and skeletal, they were dirty and debased; they violated the bodies of their friends to save themselves, a choice which must surely stay with one forever no matter how vital it was. As Numa explains, the survivors died alongside the deceased—they were just the ones who got to come back home.
Director: J. A. Bayona
Writer: J. A. Bayona
Starring: Enzo Vogrincic Roldán, Matías Recalt, Agustín Pardella, Felipe González Otaño, Luciano Chatton, Valentino Alonso, Francisco Romero, Agustín Berruti, Andy Pruss, Simón Hempe, Juan Caruso, Esteban Bigliardi, Rocco Posca, Esteban Kukuriczka, Rafael Federman, Agustín Della Corte, Tomas Wolf
Release Date: January 4, 2024 (Netflix)
Brianna Zigler is an entertainment writer based in middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts. Her work has appeared at Little White Lies, Film School Rejects, Thrillist, Bright Wall/Dark Room and more, and she writes a bi-monthly newsletter called That’s Weird. You can follow her on Twitter, where she likes to engage in stimulating discussions on films like Movie 43, Clifford, and Watchmen.