Frank Marshall’s 1993 film Alive, a predecessor to Society of the Snow (2023) wasn’t a full account of the Uruguayan rugby team's 1972 plane crash. It turns into a harrowing true story when Spanish film director J.A. Bayona focuses on the metamorphosis of its dead-s and survivors. It was a Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 that carried a sporty rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay to Santiago, Chile. While they continued their journey after a brief halt due to bad weather, the pilot failed to make it over the Andes.
It took some time for the passengers to realize that they had already lost some of them from a chartered flight with fewer strangers. Rest were isolated from the whole world and trapped in the snow-capped Andes. Extremely harsh weather. Frigid bodies. The injured need medical care. Others need hope to survive. Rescue flights cannot trace them.

J.A. Bayona’s best efforts to make Society of the Snow a survival thriller begin at this point. The plane’s wreckage, I think, the middle part becomes their shelter. They lay on one another crammed. Unbearable cold and fierce winds force them to cuddle each other. They share all scatted goods around - wine, cigarettes, clothes, warmers. In a week, they ran out of food. Reality sucks.

Could be salacious or real. The script is up now dividing its characters on a moral debate. I found it very logical rather than an overly sentimental scene. Giving space for everyone to follow their conscience, two of them pick broken glass pieces and cut the dead bodies kept outside in the snow. Slowly, everybody turns cannibals to survive. The pain and shudder in each were piercing. Society of the Snow keeps its people in a thread, lifting their spirits high and finding rare joy in motivating each other. There was a natural flow of escape attempts by the mighty and healthy players who did every bit to survive and let the world know their plight.

The film is based on Pablo Vierci’s 2008 book of the same name. A harsh 72-day survival story of admirably willed human beings in the Andes mountains. On Netflix.