Director J.A. Bayona is drawn to calamities and the unimaginable fortitude—and providence—required to survive them, and 11 years after he tackled those subjects with 2012’s The Impossible (and then, in far more fantastical terms, with 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), he revisits them with Society of the Snow, a dramatized account of the 1972 Andes flight disaster. Though now an oft-told tale (including by 1993’s Alive), Bayona’s latest feature finds new measures of beauty and horror amidst its wreckage, casting a haunting spell—at once horrific and hopeful, despairing and inspiring—that marks it as his finest film to date, and a fitting tribute to those who both perished and managed to escape their fateful mountain tomb.
“This is a place where life is impossible,” says Numa (Enzo Vogrincic Roldán), thereby underlining Society of the Snow’s (on Netflix Jan. 4) relationship to Bayona’s past work as well as bluntly summing up its environs: a cold, barren, snow-covered valley in the Andes Mountains where a plane heading from Uruguay to Chile carrying 40 passengers and five crew members, many of them male teenage members of the Old Christians Club rugby union team, went down in a crash on Oct. 13, 1972. As close to the middle of nowhere as any spot on the planet, it was a location almost preternaturally designed to never be found, and for 71 days, it wasn’t, forcing those who didn’t die during the initial accident to valiantly try to stay alive. As became immediately clear to all, that was an arduous task, given that they only had half the craft’s fuselage for shelter, minimal clothes to keep themselves warm (especially at night, when temperatures dropped upwards of 80 degrees), and scant rations to stave off starvation.
Altar boy Numa is the nominal protagonist of Society of the Snow as well as its narrator, although as written by Bayona, Bernat Vilaplana, Jaime Marques, and Nicolás Casariego (from Pablo Vierci’s book of the same name), the film boasts an ever-shifting focus, training its gaze on many different rugby players as they endeavor to grapple with their dire circumstances. Marcelo (Diego Vegezzi), the team leader, instinctively continues holding that position post-crash, keeping morale high and organizing their makeshift operation. Fito (Esteban Kukuriczka) is a pragmatist who, from the outset, is skeptical about a quick rescue. Roberto is clear-headed and determined, qualities that will serve him well as things go from bad to worse. They and numerous others, some known simply by their faces and others by their deeds, are cleanly drawn and never over-embellished, and the proceedings’ habit of moving freely among (and between) them comes across as a natural reflection of the fact that there was no one main character in this saga, merely a collection of individuals compelled to band together for themselves and each other.
As most movingly articulated by injured Arturo (Fernando Contigiani García), Society of the Snow is a snapshot of brotherhood as a bond that keeps disparate people united and breathing, even in the darkest of times. Things certainly prove bleak for these disparate souls in the Andes, especially once their food runs out and they’re forced to consider eating their deceased comrades for sustenance. This cannibalism was (upon their rescue), and continues to be, the chief sensationalistic element of this nightmare, and Bayona doesn’t shy away from it. Nor, however, does he judge it, except insofar as he persuasively depicts it as an agonizing if unavoidable choice that all were forced to make, what with the only other option being a slow and excruciating death.
There’s no grisliness in Society of the Snow; Bayona keeps blood and dismemberment largely off-screen, just as those tasked with preparing human flesh for consumption did for their own comrades, the better to guarantee the success of their ghastly undertaking. Instead, the director throws the enormity of the landscape, and the imperceptible smallness of the survivors, into sharp relief, balancing panoramic aerial views of the crash site with shadow-encased, borderline-distorted close-ups of his characters’ visages, their complexions filthy and their eyes panicked and anguished. Bayona utilizes proximity to heighten terror and pathos, and the more he sticks closely to these men in their confined quarters (which become more cramped as the situation deteriorates), the greater he imparts a potent impression of their bone-deep fear, their consuming despondency, and also their resilient refusal to simply give up—and, just as importantly, their unwillingness to let those beside them quit on themselves.
Society of the Snow is a portrait of strength in numbers, and its story—replete with treks into the surrounding mountains that leave hikers exposed to the unendurable nocturnal cold, and thunderous avalanches that trap them beneath the white, powdery surface in a de facto metal coffin—boasts multiple literal and figurative deaths and rebirths. Refusing to resort to melodrama, the film assumes the trauma-wracked tenor and perspective of Numa, who wonders, “What happened to us? Who were we on the mountain?” On the one hand, Bayona provides those answers, and yet they simultaneously remain elusive throughout. Camaraderie and an unquenchable hunger for additional life sustained the 16 men who eventually emerged from this Andes hellhole after 72 days. However, in a far graver way, what they experienced, and what they returned with, is something dark, unshakeable, unhealable—a scream of sorrow, fury and pain so loud that, were it unleashed, it would dwarf all the real cries (for mother! For help!) that clanged off the fuselage’s metal interior.
There’s tragedy and triumph in Society of the Snow but Bayona refuses to manipulatively linger on either. His is a study of a legitimate worst-case scenario and the very real, reasonable, desperate, and dreadful decisions that were made in order to transcend it. Still, no matter the occasional talk about faith and God, no absolution awaited those who finally returned to civilization, and perhaps the greatest strength of Bayona’s excellent drama is that it treats its material with the same sad, stern sobriety demonstrated by Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571’s living passengers—a group of ordinary people who learned that life is unthinkably unfair, that surviving is difficult, and that togetherness is ultimately everything.
