Soci­ety of the Snow review – a vis­cer­al sur­vival drama

Over the last two decades, hit TV shows like Lost and Yel­low­jack­ets have inject­ed super­nat­ur­al and mys­ti­cal ele­ments into plane crash sur­vival sto­ries. This night­mare sce­nario is already ter­ri­fy­ing with­out smoke mon­sters and creepy sym­bols carved into wood. Soci­ety of the Snow doesn’t hold back on dish­ing out real-world ter­ror in depict­ing the Uruguayan 1972 Andes flight dis­as­ter and the young rug­by play­ers strand­ed on the iso­lat­ed snowy moun­tain range.

Adapt­ed from Pablo Vierci’s 2009 book of the same name, direc­tor JA Bay­ona crafts a large-scale spec­ta­cle with­out com­pro­mis­ing poignant details, equal­ly wow­ing us with impres­sive loca­tions (includ­ing the actu­al crash site) and the under­ly­ing and unre­lent­ing resilience of the survivors.

Giv­en that Bay­ona first read Vierci’s in-depth recount while in deep research for The Impos­si­ble — por­tray­ing the 2004 tsuna­mi in Thai­land — it is hard­ly sur­pris­ing that he was drawn to anoth­er true tale cap­tur­ing the human capac­i­ty for escap­ing the most treach­er­ous cir­cum­stances. Rather than opt­ing for famous faces like Ethan Hawke in Frank Marshall’s 1993 Eng­lish-lan­guage ver­sion of this sto­ry, the Span­ish direc­tor wise­ly cast a group of most­ly unknown young Uruguayan and Argen­tine actors who instant­ly sell the lived-in team cama­raderie, from the rug­by pitch to the wreckage.

While you might not remem­ber everyone’s names as their phys­i­cal appear­ance shrinks and hair grows longer, this is much more than a tech­ni­cal­ly bril­liant film. Scenes show­cas­ing poet­ry, prayer and devices fash­ioned to aid exis­tence empha­sise how art, reli­gion and engi­neer­ing are a life­line. In an ensem­ble this large, some char­ac­ter devel­op­ment gets lost amid the broad­er explo­ration. How­ev­er, stand­outs Enzo Vogrin­cic (Numa), Agustín Pardel­la (Nan­do), and Matías Recalt (Rober­to) ham­mer home the pen­du­lum swing of hope and despair tak­ing hold through­out this ordeal.

Strik­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phy is matched by the hair and make­up design (Ana López-Puigcerv­er, David Martí and Montse Ribé are nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar), with grim injuries, mal­nu­tri­tion, and ele­ments-rav­aged facial fea­tures offer­ing addi­tion­al tex­ture to the already fraught circumstance.

Switch­ing between the oppres­sive vast space of the snowy moun­tains and the cramped met­al con­fines of the fuse­lage shows a film­mak­er equal­ly adept at increas­ing anx­i­ety in and out­side the plane wreck­age. For the crash itself, it feels like a life­time from tur­bu­lence to impact, and even then, the cam­era does not pull away. It is a gut-wrench­ing sequence that isn’t even the most heart-in-your-mouth moment of the film, and Bay­ona takes claus­tro­pho­bia to new heights — or rather, depths. Thank­ful­ly, it isn’t grue­some for grue­some sake, and when it comes to sourc­ing food, there is dig­ni­ty and com­pas­sion for both the dead and liv­ing in how this infa­mous last-resort choice is depicted.

Michael Giacchi­no tem­pers the soar­ing score so it doesn’t enter overt­ly grandiose ter­ri­to­ry. As with his work on Lost, it cranks up sus­pense and emo­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the action ven­tures beyond the crash site. Even if you know how this famous sto­ry ends, the final act is an exer­cise in ten­sion-build­ing that makes this vis­cer­al sur­vival dra­ma mem­o­rable long after the cred­its finish.

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