Alive

The riveting story of the Uruguayan rugby team who had to find unorthodox methods for survival after their chartered plane crashed into the Andes en route to an away game in Chile in 1972 is relatively well adapted to the big screen by Steven Spielberg's regular partners Frank Marshall (director) and Kathleen Kennedy (producer). Marshall directs the air disaster brilliantly, but cannot avoid some B-movie sensibilities in the film's first part. He is an old-school director, meaning that even the interpersonal elements - which are the most interesting part of the story - come off as action-driven. I suspect the film may have made more of a lasting impression had they been made to carry the script to a larger degree. Still, once Ethan Hawke's character finds his footing, the film becomes truer, more poignant and a tad less Hollywoodized. Alive may well derive a large part of its effectiveness from the fact that it's based on real events, but it's effective nonetheless.

I watched this when I was a kid and probably far too young for this type of a movie. It was scary back then especially being forced to eat people to survive. I recently watched Society Of The Snow with the English dub on Netflix it was really great and very heartbreaking. I think it's everything that Alive was lacking. I will say Alive was a great attempt to tell a very difficult story though so without comparing it to Society Of The Snow, it's a good movie and still shows you what the human spirit can do to survive but if you really want to feel the horror of what happened to this rugby team, then check out Society Of The Snow.

Given the knowledge from the onset of the movie that the story and characters are real, we are plunged into a world where man must choose whether or not he wants to survive and live to see the world as he knows it once more. The reality i felt when watching this movie was how easily we take for granted things like food to eat, clean clothes to wear, and warmth that comes from blankets and heaters. By the middle of the movie (when watching it last night after nearly 10 years) i was aghast at the sheer strength of some of all of the people that survived the initial crash of the actual plane. And when the deciding moment arrives where they must choose whether they are willing to eat human flesh to survive and find a way beyond the Andes, I found i asked myself 'what would you do?'. The answer is, i don't know. i truly don't. This movie makes you realise how precious life is, and how we should never take anything for granted. How we should be thankful of all that we have, and yet how easy it is to lose all that just by a bad twist of fate. Call this movie what you will, I think it's a must-see for everyone because it really happened. There are lessons to be learned, morals to be recognised, and questions to be asked and somehow solved. Each person/character you will encounter in this movie is unique which makes it all the more worthwhile to watch. Because you find yourself sympathetic with the viewpoints of all the men and women in the movie yet at the same time questioning what decision you would make if you were in their place. Maybe we never will know or understand what they went through. But by watching this movie and reading the book, it will help us become wiser people and possibly open our minds to the endless enigma that is life, God, and the vastness and emptiness of the world that lies not so beyond our reach.

Critics often fault Alive with petty complaints: Gee, wasn't the avalanche a convenient plot device? Why didn't the plane have signal flares? How come the survivors were all those pretty boys? Why don't we see the dramatic search? In doing so, they're faulting reality: The avalanche really did happen when and how it was portrayed. The wreckage really did lack signal flares. The plane really was chartered by a bunch of ruggedly handsome young men -- what else do you expect from a rugby team? And yes, the search was dramatic (the moment when Roberta Cannessa's father learned that his son is alive is one of those stranger-than-fiction moments), but it was enough of a task to compress the survivors' story into a feature film. The search would have comprised another film entirely on its own.

How do you compress nearly three months of terror and tedium into less than two hours while still holding the attention of the audience? It's a daunting task, and Alive manages quite nicely. With technical consulting provided by crash survivor Nando Parrado, Alive captures the look and mood of the crash site, and sketches in the relationships among the passengers of the ill-fated flight.

It leaves many strange questions hanging (Where, in this plane full of mostly unmarried adults, does Nando come up with two tiny red sneakers?) and those questions are best answered by reading the book. And watch Alive again. Things become clearer with multiple viewings.

Alive is a great movie experience. It is based on a true event in 1972 and on the narrative book by Piers Paul Read. It's about a Uraguayan college rugby team whose chartered airplane crashed deep in the icy Andes Mountains while on its way to a game in Santiago, Chile. Reeling with disbelief and shock and bleeding from dozens of wounds, the passengers who lived through the crash are faced with the brutal elements, starvation and the horror that they may never be found alive. The cast is terrific: Ethan Hawke as Nando, the levelheaded, determined leader; Vincent Spano as desperate Antonio, whose optimism slowly crumbles under the weight of hopelessness; Josh Hamilton as medical student Roberto, who tirelessly treats gangrenous wounds knowing his ministrations are useless; and especially Bruce Ramsay as Carlitos, whose unwavering faith in God and his sense of dark humor ("If you eat me, will you promise to clean your plates?") acts as the glue that holds this wet, shivering clump of survivors together. You indeed can feel the cold and the misery as you watch these poor people wade through waist deep snow, endure a nightmarish avalanche, spend days at a time soaked to their skins in minus forty degree winds, and face the ultimate decision that will make or break them physically, emotionally and spiritually: whether or not they can bring themselves to eat the bodies of friends and relatives who did not survive the crash. Everything in this movie, from James Newton Howard's touching music score to the unbeatable cinematography showing the majesty and severity of the Andes, is beautiful and flawless. This movie is one I'd recommend to anyone who wants an exciting, touching, unforgettable movie to chew on for years to come.