4/5 stars
The Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 disaster of 1972, in which a chartered plane travelling from the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo, to Santiago, Chile crashed in the Andes mountains, will always be remembered for one gruesome fact.
The survivors – most of them young rugby players from the Old Christians Club travelling to a match – survived for 72 days awaiting rescue by eating the corpses of their fellow passengers.
The subject of numerous books and films, most memorably the 1993 American drama Alive, starring Ethan Hawke and narrated by John Malkovich, this complex and morally challenging tale of courage and perseverance in the face of unspeakable adversity is revisited once again in the Spanish-language drama Society of the Snow.
Based on interviews with the 16 survivors conducted by journalist Pablo Verci for his 2009 book of the same name, Society of the Snow plays both as a thrilling survival adventure and a deeply profound meditation on the value of human life.
As their team’s name suggests, many of these young men were raised in a deeply religious environment and, when faced with the do-or-die proposition of consuming human flesh, had to overcome not just moral and legal hurdles but spiritual ones too.
While many of the passengers are able to rationalise their decision to do so and, as the tagline for the 1993 film put it so succinctly, “overcame the impossible by doing the unthinkable”, Enzo Vogrincic’s devoutly religious Numa, who also narrates the film, wrestles desperately with what amounts to him as nothing more than cannibalism.
Employing a cast of largely unknown and inexperienced South American actors, Bayona creates a palpable sense of danger and realism.
Acknowledging his background in horror-film making – his breakthrough came with the 2007 ghost story The Orphanage – he also refuses to shy away from the story’s more gruesome elements.
The make-up team from Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, for example, fashioned the increasingly stripped-down human carcases that litter the crash site as a constant reminder of their descent into barbarity.
Society for the Snow is far from cheap exploitation, however, and its 13 nominations for the 38th Goya Awards is testament to how enthusiastically the film has been embraced.
From its nerve-shredding crash sequence to the breathtaking and unforgiving locations, Bayona has delivered a robust and riveting retelling of this extraordinary and unfathomable experience.
Society of the Snow will start streaming on Netflix on January 4, 2024.
