La sociedad de la nieve

The real life story of The Uruguayan rugby team and friends, who's plane crashed into a glacier over The Andes.

It's been many years since I watched Alive, a harrowing, but interesting film. I must admit I was staggered by just how good this film was. Upsetting, thought provoking, at times hard to watch, but one I couldn't turn away from.

It is very sensitively handled, the story is told in a very human way, they don't focus on the bleaker side of the story too much, so we're not forced to watch the more unsavoury parts, instead they focus more on the human spirit, the fight for survival.

I was worried that it would feel over long at 2.5 hours, but at no point did it dip, it went by very quickly.

It's very nicely produced, it looks so good, my advice, watch in its original form, with the subtitles, it's so much better.

Impressive.

9/10.

I've always loved the 1993 version (Alive) and seen it lots of times so I was always looking forward to seeing this. I thought it was pretty good... that is until the last 30 minutes - wow! So much emotion and completes the whole story that was missing from the 1993 version.

By no means am I saying this is a poor film, in fact the production was great and so much time and effort went into this going from the write ups prior to its release. Having relations involved from the true story also makes it more emotional.

If you find it long at almost 2hrs 30min just hold out to the last 30 minutes.

Since the tsunami shocker THE IMPOSSIBLE with Naomi WATTS and Tom HOLLAND, it has been known that the Spanish director Juan Antonio BAYONA has a very good hand for disaster films. He stages the respective catastrophes in a powerful and visually overwhelming way, approaching those affected by an unexpected event with great tact and sensitivity.

Based on the novel LA SOCIEDAD DE LA NIEVE by Pablo VIERCI, BAYONA tells the well-known story of a rugby team from Montevideo in Uruguay that crashes in the Andes on a flight to Chile. What follows is a long ordeal lasting several months, which the few survivors only survive because they cross one last taboo...

This addresses the questions that none of us want to imagine: What would we do to stay alive in a hopeless situation? The author Pablo VIERCI probably went to school in Montevideo with some of those affected, but was not himself on Flight 571 in October 1972. Nevertheless, the plot seems very believable and also includes the perspective of those who didn't make it.

BAYONA has created a very excellent film that uses beautiful images to tell of the horror of the deepest abyss that people can fall into. The technically outstanding film was awarded two EUROPEAN FILM AWARDS for visual effects and make-up. It also received a GOLDEN GLOBE nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Completely right!

With films like THE PLATFORM, BELOW ZERO and most recently NOWHERE, the global streaming service NETFLIX has proven that it has an excellent hand for Spanish-language cinema. THE SOCIETY OF THE SNOW will most certainly continue this success story.

Comparison between extreme wide shots of beautiful and even magical nature and close-up of faces of agony and shots of cramped space of broken aircraft creates a bizarre sense of incompatibility. To heighten the reality of the movie, the crew and actors really put in all the effort, and I can even see that. Location filming, set design, and weight loss take a big part in transporting the audience back to that winter in 1972 and to the deep pile of snow somewhere in the Andes. Enzo Vogrincic's performance is applaudable. He describes the events from a step behind from the crowd, but he is still a part of the team. He maintains that balance perfectly. He does not seem too detached but still sees everything from above.

I know there have been many versions of the story told in this movie, but I haven't read or seen any of them, so this was all fresh to me.

This is not a movie I think I would ever want to watch again. The word "grueling" was pretty much invented to describe the experience of watching this film. But damn is this riveting, even if in a kind of morbid way. It's also a dazzling technical achievement, one of those films where the effects are so seamless you can't always tell what's special effects and what's real.

"Society of the Snow" is not primarily a character-driven film, yet I was impressed by how much I came to know and like all of the characters in this despite the fact that only two or three are given the majority of screen time. At first, I didn't even know who was who and only knew they had names because their character's name would be listed before their line of dialogue in the subtitles. But by the time the film was over I felt like a knew all of them and cared about them deeply.

This movie does a great job of showing the capacity humans have for normalizing behavior that in other circumstances would be unthinkable.

One of my favorite movies of the year.

Grade: A.