Society of the Snow is more than just a brutal recreation of the tragedy known as the Miracle of the Andes — it's also an existentialist tale about friendship, faith, and the moral boundaries that collapse in a life-or-death situation.
This formidable Netflix production is not so much about getting to know every factual detail of the story, which many viewers will already be familiar with, as it is about understanding its devastating human ramifications.
One of Netflix's strongest awards contenders this year alongside Maestro, Society of the Snow is a visual spectacle with a conscience.
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The movie narrates the crash of Uruguayan Flight 571 in the Andes in October 1972, which resulted in the death of 29 people and a brutal 72-day survival nightmare for a group of young rugby players.
Their story travelled around the globe and has been adapted to the screen before, most notably through 1993's Alive, starring a young Ethan Hawke. This true story was also a source of inspiration for Showtime's Yellowjackets.
However, Society of the Snow stands out from previous titles as a large-scale dramatisation that cuts to the core without resorting to morbid prurience.
Spanish filmmaker JA Bayona pulls some smart moves in order to avoid turning a tragedy into a distasteful show, like casting relatively unknown Argentinian and Uruguayan actors instead of established stars, and putting the dynamics of the group before the individual.
He also makes sure every single victim is accounted for by writing their names and ages on the screen as they perish because of their wounds, the cold, the famine or the extreme conditions the remaining passengers endured in the Andes.
The story is based on Pablo Vierci's book of the same title, which is told from the perspectives of the sixteen survivors, who were also extensively interviewed for the film.
The result is a script where the action blends with insightful reflections on memory, morality and death. There is a thread carrying the story — the voice of one of the passengers, Numa Turcatti (played by Enzo Vogrincic), a 24-year-old law student who was not supposed to be in that plane, and quickly becomes a moral compass for both protagonists and viewers.
With him, Society of the Snow becomes a humanist experience as much as a traditional survival movie, reaching a sweet spot between brutal visual realism, contained sentimentality and devastating existentialism.
Talking about realism, Bayona is not one for half measures when it comes to bringing catastrophic scenarios on screen.
Like the stunning tsunami sequence in The Impossible, the filmmaker creates here an impressively terrifying plane crash. The scene grows in suspense as the initial turbulence leads to a spine-chilling disaster, with seats crashing into each other, ankles breaking with the impact and parts of the plane falling apart to reveal the snowy nightmare underneath.
The top-notch production uses every element to make this movie a colossal experience, from the locations – including the real site of the crash – to the incredible dedication of the actors, some of them even participated in weight-loss programs with striking results, to the craft, with make-up artists David Martí and Montse Ribé making those wounds look incredibly gruesome.
Overwhelming the viewers' senses is everything for Society of the Snow, as the horror of a well-known story is told again not using the same formula, but reinterpreting it in a different light.
Society of the Snow is now available on Netflix.
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Mireia (she/her) has been working as a movie and TV journalist for over eight years. Based in the UK, she is a former deputy movies editor at Digital Spy, and previously worked for the Spanish magazine Fotogramas. Mireia's work has been published in other outlets such as Esquire and Elle in Spain, and WeLoveCinema and GamesRadar+ in the UK. She is also a published author, having written the essay Biblioteca Studio Ghibli: Nicky, la aprendiz de bruja about Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service.
During her years as a freelance journalist and film critic, Mireia has covered festivals around the world and has interviewed high-profile talents such as Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal and many more. She's also taken part in juries such as the FIPRESCI jury at Venice Film Festival and the short film jury at Kingston International Film Festival in London. LinkedIn
