✯✯✯✯½

In 1993, the story of the Uruguayan Andes flight disaster appeared on the screen for American audiences through the film Alive, directed by Frank Marshall. But as noted critic Roger Ebert had said of the film at the time, “no movie can really encompass the enormity of the experience,” with regards to recounting how the rugby players had resorted to desperate means in order to survive their ordeal. And over the years, this story has been revisited on the screen through documentaries featuring detailed interviews with the survivors. This is where J. A. Bayona’s Society of the Snow differs, having close contact with the survivors, adapting a recent recollection of memories in a book written by a classmate of the survivors.

As J. A. Bayona recollects the memories of the survivors of the Andes flight disaster, going from the moment when the team first takes off all the way to their crash, and the grisly details of the survivors’ ordeal. But what’s most important, above everything else, in recollecting the memories of those who survived the crash, is capturing that uneasy feeling of having survived a near death scenario. The unease comes to a point, where you start to feel exactly what it is that these survivors have been thinking every passing day, whether or not their survival in the extreme cold will even be worth waiting for a rescue.

With a cast that comprises primarily of newcomers, J. A. Bayona brings out the best in all of them. They’re not performing characters, but they’re performing ordinary people who are looking to make the most out of what they’re going through. Key to this, is knowing that Bayona is establishing clear bonds between the survivors of the ordeal, so that we can get to know them like we’re among those who remain amidst the wreckage. The cast themselves are also great to watch together, which ends up making the thought of seeing these people going through such a horrifying ordeal all the more heartbreaking.

Bayona’s film doesn’t ever feel like it’s sensationalizing the ordeal either, instead all of those horrifying details of what the survivors had went through, just simply to stay alive – capture the lack of certainty as to what would ever happen next. For those who are unfamiliar with the nature of the disaster, it never feels like a single article being skimmed to be retold for audiences, but a moment where those who have survived are questioning whether or not they deserved to. All the guilt feels prevalent, especially when they’re forced to cannibalize the corpses in order to feed themselves while there’s no food present around them. Not only do these moments become especially haunting, but the amount of detail present in the corpses is just staggering, also placing you in the headspace that the survivors had occupied.

Above all else, I think what allows Society of the Snow to land with such a strong mark, is knowing that J. A. Bayona has been in close contact with those who had survived. With retelling the story of the Andes flight disaster on the screen, he paints a picture of what it felt like to adjust to what was to these people, a new way of living, in order to stay alive. Bayona himself is no stranger to telling the stories of disasters to the screen, especially when considering the scope he had explored within The Impossible, but the intimacy present in here is astonishing – because he captured a moment in these peoples’ lives where they didn’t feel like humans anymore. And with knowing where they were, and had to await their rescue, the vast endlessness of the Andes only captured a feeling of hopelessness that was only growing larger by the minute.

But even with that being noted, Society of the Snow is not a hopeless movie. Instead, Society of the Snow is never showing the scope of this disaster as a spectacle, but it’s a movie all about people trying to do the best for themselves in spite of the circumstances. And to that end, it’s maybe the most heartbreaking way that this disaster could be brought to the screen. The fact that Bayona has remained in close contact with the survivors feels evident, but the biggest success of Society of the Snow is knowing that this is a film that this whole ordeal, as presented, didn’t bring out the same people upon being rescued, they just came out of it haunted with this memory for the rest of their lives.

Watch the trailer right here.

All images via Netflix.

Directed by J. A. Bayona
Screenplay by J. A. Bayona, Bernat Vilaplana, Jaime Marques, Nicolás Casariego, based on the book by Pablo Vierci
Produced by Belén Atienza, Sandra Hermida, J. A. Bayona
Starring Enzo Vogrinic, Matías Recalt, Augstín 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, Manuela Olivera, Agustín Della Corte, Tomas Wolf
Release Date: December 22, 2023
Running Time: 144 minutes