A review of the new film “Society Of The Snow”
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was the chartered flight of a Fairchild FH-227D from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago, Chile, that crashed in the Andes mountains on 13 October 1972. The flight was carrying 45 passengers and crew, including 19 members of the Old Christians Club rugby union team, along with their families, supporters and friends. Three crew members and nine passengers died immediately and several more died soon after due to the frigid temperatures and the severity of their injuries.
During the 72 days following the crash, the survivors suffered from extreme hardships, including sub-zero temperatures, exposure, starvation, and an avalanche, which led to the deaths of 13 more passengers. The remaining passengers resorted to cannibalism to survive. Eventually two survivors, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, made a 10-day trek to find help. On 22 and 23 December 1972, two and a half months after the crash, the 14 remaining survivors were rescued.
This utterly astonishing story of human survival has been told in film before: the 1993 American production “Alive”. It was shot in British Colombia with an American cast led by Ethan Hawke. I never saw that film, but I wanted to see “Society Of The Snow”, the 2023 Spanish version of the story.
The photography is stunning: much of the film was shot in the Sierra Nevada in Spain but other shooting was in Uruguay, Chile and Argentina including the actual crash site in the Andes. Three replicas of the fuselage wreckage were deployed to considerable effect. A deliberate choice was made to use unknown actors for the Spanish-speaking cast and clearly great efforts were made to consult with the survivors and their families. Spanish director J. A. Bayona has managed to make a film that makes you feel that you are in the action while demonstrating sensitivity to the real characters portrayed and the agonising decisions that they had to make.
The scale and impact of this work cry out for it to be seen on the big screen, but the film has only had a very limited theatrical release in a few countries, so you’ll have to see it – as I did – on Netflix. It has been nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 2024 Academy Awards.