SOCIETY OF THE SNOW Review: Properly Solemn

Travel advisory: don't fly over the Andes.

Society of the Snow
The film is available to stream January 4, 2024, via Netflix.

Bodies fly, bones crush, blood flows. And that's only the beginning of the horrors to come.

In November 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed into the Andes mountains. What was intended to be a quick flight from Montevideo, Uruguay, to neighboring Santiago, Chile, turned into an unimaginable tragedy that unfolded amidst freezing conditions in barren terrain.

Growing up in sunny southern California, I read accounts about the crash and its aftermath, and could only shiver in horror. How could anyone survive?

Frank Marshall's Alive (1993), adapted from Piers Paul Read's 1974 book, endeavored to tell the story respectfully, though with a certain Hollywood studio shine, and casting mostly white actors to play the mostly Uruguayan survivors.

Pablo Vierci's book, La sociedad de la nieve, first published in 2009, serves as the inspiration for director J.A. Bayona's adaptation, his first Spanish-language film since The Orphanage (2007). Bayona told The Hollywood Reporter that he discovered Vierci's book when doing research for The Impossible and has been seeking to adapt it ever since, "in Spanish, with local actors, in the same locations where the story took place and in the same conditions."

Our own Kurt Halfyard reviewed The Impossible in 2012, acknowledging the "traditional Hollywood moviemaking on display," noting that the film "only has eyes for Caucasians." This time, however, Bayona tells the story from a perspective that only has eyes for the Uruguayans, keeping the focus exclusively on the survivors as they huddle together for warmth, the temperature dropping far below freezing, and their broken bodies fighting to stay alive.

It's not an easy watch, and it's clearly not meant to be, instead giving the viewer some idea of the horrors involved from the perspective of the survivors. What would it be like to have survived a horrific plane crash, only to realize that some of your friends and family members did not? Or they are dying in front of your eyes? And you are helpless to do anything to prevent it?

And to hear on the short-wave radio that the search for survivors has been halted until the springtime, since most likely no one survived? And there is no vegetation to eat or animals to kill and eat? And the temperature keeps dropping?

As grueling viewing experiences go, it's told with all intended gravity and depth of feeling. The tone remains properly solemn. It's a meditation on the meaning of existence.

It's impossible not to feel a great degree of sympathy for anyone who suffered in those circumstances. Still, it's also difficult to feel great empathy for the survivors as individuals because their lives previous to the crash are glimpsed only briefly. Director Bayona, who is credited for the screenplay alongside Bernat Vilaplana, Jaime Marques-Olarreaga, and Nicolas Casariego, studiously avoids the easy sentimentality of extended flashbacks and also declines to insert inspirational messaging in the brief, pain-wracked conversations between the survivors.

Yet that leaves the viewer cold. Watching the movie, I hoped for some measure of understanding into what contributed to the survivors' resilience: was it their naturally optimistic personality? Was it their determination to survive for the sake of their families? Was it their faith in God or a higher power of some sort? Was it their own stubborn nature? Was it luck?

By keeping his cards tight to his chest, Bayona lays down a technically-impressive and well-intended hand that honors the victims and the survivors with respect. The heart must come later.