Remember Alive, the 1993 movie about the Uruguayan rugby team members who survived being stranded in the Andes after a plane crash, and took the unfortunate—but most arguably necessary—measure of eating those who didn’t survive?
It was a well-done movie, albeit slightly odd. It was acted well and featured one of cinema history’s gnarliest plane crashes. (That visual of the dudes getting sucked out the back of the plane has danced through my head during every flight I’ve taken since.) While the cast members worked their asses off and gave mostly solid performances, actors like Vincent Spano, Ethan Hawke and Josh Hamilton were, decidedly, not Uruguayan. They made no effort to sound Uruguayan, and they certainly didn’t look Uruguayan—so the move felt a bit inauthentic. (I will say: I rewatched it recently, and Hawke and Hamilton are total bad-asses in that movie, even if they were miscast.)
Now comes Society of the Snow, a film that retells the story in Spanish. It’s so authentic that one of the actual survivors plays his dad in the movie.
Taking another look at the hell that rugby team went through works well for director J.A. Bayona and his cast—and, yes, the depiction of the crash itself is quite harrowing. This take is a little darker and gloomier when it needs to be, and it definitely packs an emotional payoff when the survivors are eventually rescued. Most viewers know what the outcome will be, but Bayona and crew manage to still keep up the suspense.
Bayona is no stranger to movies about real-life disasters, having helmed the excellent tsunami movie The Impossible. (He also directed Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, so nobody’s perfect.) The film is full of surprises—most notably the fact that you may feel inspired and happy after a movie in which some folks had to resort to eating people. It’s not an easy task, but Bayona and team pull it off.
Alive was good. Society of the Snow is very good.
Society of the Snow is now streaming on Netflix.
