‘Society of the Snow,’ and What One Will Do to Live

The most obvious question to be asked, any time a story that has already been filmed before is made again, is why? Why do we need another version of this story? Way back in 1993, director Frank Marshall made a film called Alive, based on the true story of a Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the frigid Andes, the horrendous circumstances they lived under, and the awful choices they made to survive. 

In the most basic sense, Alive is not a bad film. It’s competent, reasonably well-directed, and acted out by a strong cast. If that feels like a soft defense of what the film accomplished, well, that’s because it is. For 72 days the 16 survivors (the plane carried a total of 45 passengers) dealt with frigid cold, avalanches, and most importantly, a dwindling food supply in one of the most inaccessible and barren locations in the world. Their suffering was extraordinary. 

Alive’s depiction of their struggle was anything but. I still recall the moment the film lost me: As those still drawing icy breath ran out of food, they had to decide whether or not to eat the frozen bodies of those who did not survive the crash. The excellent actor Ethan Hawke is given a speech to rally the living to accept the fact that to live, they must eat the dead. Despite his finest efforts, Hawke is saddled with a tone-deaf monologue that feels more like a speech one might give the team before “the big game.” Not only did Hawke deserve better, but so did the audience, and above all, so did those who lived through the experience. 

The Society of the Snow aims to rectify the mediocrity of Alive, and it does, perhaps almost too well. The film’s director, JA Bayona (perhaps best known for The Impossible, and The Orphanage),  understands that the audience must, as much as one possibly can, go on this grueling journey with this incredibly unfortunate group of people. And Bayona does his damnedest. Compared to Society of the Snow, Alive is a Disney film.

After a relatively brief prologue, showing these vibrant young men in competition and enjoying the sort of camaraderie that only comes from sports and youth, Bayona puts us on that ill-fated plane in October of 1972 with these athletes on their way to Chile to play another match. You see their enthusiasm, their positivity, and their physical beauty. You watch them make jokes about the dangers of flying over the Andes. They are not joking for long. Soon, the mountains call the plane to ground. I have seen a number of harrowing plane crash scenes on film (Peter Weir’s Fearless comes to mind), but nothing can prepare you for the bone-shattering, bodies thrown about as if ripped from their seats by an unholy wind storm, of Bayona’s depiction. In the hands of Bayona, the disaster doesn’t just feel like a crash, but an event of almost supernatural wickedness. 

And then things get worse. 

With only the shell of the plane, the clothes on their bodies, and whatever they can find in the strewn about luggage, they try to bear the miserable cold. As they tremble with frost resting on their faces, you quickly come to realize that for many, this valley will become a grave. 

With each confirmed death, Bayona puts their age and name on the screen. These were people he seems to be saying, and to name them is of no small importance. The significance of this ritual becomes all the more painful as characters you get to know and care for fall prey to their atrocious conditions. It’s not just the cold and isolation, it’s the lack of nourishment. After going through the cabin and luggage, they gather together a suitcase full of food: chocolates, crackers, snacks. Nowhere near enough sustenance to keep them alive for long. 

The physical manifestation of their starvation goes beyond the tightening of their belts and the sinking of their cheeks. They move like zombies. Their urine turns black. The initial hopes that they will be discovered are soon thwarted when they realize the search and rescue planes can be seen from the ground, but they cannot be seen from the air. 

Bayona pushes you to the breaking point of what you, the viewer, can stand. But all the while you know that the discomfort you are experiencing from your warm home and soft couch is nothing compared to those that lived through this disaster. When you see a man eat his own scab due to hunger…there’s just no way to resolve that in your mind. And yet, you do understand how that character reached that point. 

The debate over eating the dead plays out in an appropriately complicated fashion. Most of the living are deeply religious. They aren’t just worried about their bodies, they are concerned for their souls. The decision to partake of the flesh of the dead is not reached easily, but starvation eventually results in pragmatism for all. 

Much of the story is told through the eyes of Numa, a man so sweet that it hurts just to look at him. Numa is one of the last to feed, but he is not hard on those who go before him. He is kind, good, and understanding. Played by Enzo Vogrincic (a near doppelgänger for tennis great Rafael Nadal), in a performance that goes far beyond “acting,” Numa is the battered and bruised heart of the film. Vogrincic is not alone in his excellence, but he is first among equals. 

As grim as Society of the Snow often is, it achieves a level of inspiration that Alive couldn’t get within screaming distance of. In showing the ingenuity of the survivors, their will to live, their ability to grind through each miserable day until two of them decide to leave the plane, traverse the mountains, and see what lies on the other side, will indeed leave you in awe of what humans are capable of. They are at war against nature, fear, and hopelessness. The journey home, for those few that make it, does bring with it something akin to joy, but is more deserving of a word that maybe doesn’t exist. The Society of the Snow may well exhaust many a viewer before the film reaches its end, but it earns every brutal moment that it puts you through. 

Society of the Snow is more than a disaster film, or a survivor story. It is high art. If one can withstand it, the harsh beauty of it results in the kind of film you will never forget. Although I understand quite reasonably if it’s the kind of film you can only watch once. 

Society of the Snow is airing now on Netflix.