First review of 2024: A review of Society of the Snow, the latest filmed version of the Andes plane crash in 1972.
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Ah, the story of the Uruguayan guys. It feels like it has accompanied my life in so many ways.
As you say, the 1993 film has too much extra drama, maybe it’s necessary for the film, but the real story is so much more than that. I was 18 years old in 1972 in Santiago, Chile, and was able to read everything published then in newspapers, to watch tv footage and interviews, to feel the awe installed in the public, to hear the jokes afterward (flight steward: -do you prefer fish or chicken, sir? -Please bring me the passenger’s list, ha, ha.).
I loved this film gave the names and age of those dying, decreasing from older to younger, as if to stress the point that the older (in their 40s and 30s, not older) were dying faster, and to help to understand that the survivors didn’t have the wise counsel nor the experience to deal with what was happening to them. Everything shown is exact from the survivors’ interviews, the period clothes and items are exact, the only thing missing I remember was that prior to the accident, turbulence they were nervously laughed at, with cries of Olé!
When Roberto and Nando arrived at the river and met the horseman, they were at the very end of their resources, eating rotten meat as it had defrosted because of the less frigid temperatures. I remember when they were interviewed by the press in Santiago, when asked what they had eaten they said they ate lichens, but nobody really believed it. In fact, they didn’t want the mothers of their friends to read in a newspaper in Uruguay that they had to restore to eating their sons and brothers. They visited them once they arrived in Montevideo and one by one, parents of the deceased forgave them.
“Survival is a mind thing, it’s a question of mental toughness” you say. So true. I would add that it happens while you’re there, in the middle of the situation. Not always you can guess how you’ll behave in a determined catastrophe, and sometimes you develop a certain stamina over time. Shackelton’s companions came to mind. Joe Simpson was already a mountaineer, so it had crossed his mind the kind of danger he was exposed to. These guys were pampered young people who didn’t have anything in their short lives which prepared them for what they had to face.
I remember after the accident, there was a father who didn’t rest looking for his son, begging for money to hire private helicopters way after the search was called off. At the same time there was another father in Uruguay who couldn’t bear the loss and gave away his son’s clothes, sold his motorcycle, etc and when his back-from-death son returned, he didn’t even have shoes to put on. (What kind of parent do you want to be? asked my brother once I became a mother. The one who is realistic or the one who fights against all odds?) What is really miraculous is that the survivors kept being friends among them, didn’t fight for fame nor money, didn’t feel they were special: they continued studies, had jobs, married and had children, some gave inspirational talks, they returned to the accident site several times to give their respects to their dead friends, to share a barbecue with the horseman who saved them and his family. Quietly, respectfully, humanely.
And another memory: exactly one year before, in December 1971, a plane crashed in the Peruvian jungle, with only one survivor, a 17 years old German girl who was travelling with her mother to spend Christmas with her biologist father. Juliane Koepcke, after checking her mother was dead, took just a fruitcake and spent 12 days walking alone, with worms infesting her arms, also being rescued miraculously by some hunters who happened to find her. By the way, she became a biologist and a librarian, and her story was filmed by Werner Herzog, who missed the same flight she took in 1971, while looking for settings for the film Aguirre.
Clary – thank you thank you for this perspective!! So interesting! so much to think about!
// and to help to understand that the survivors didn’t have the wise counsel nor the experience to deal with what was happening to them. //
interesting – yes! God, they were all so young. I thought the cast here was just incredible. they helped delineate their characters even if I didn’t know everybody’s name.
// Not always you can guess how you’ll behave in a determined catastrophe, and sometimes you develop a certain stamina over time. //
True! This is one of those things that fascinates me – it’s almost like the disaster unfolds in stages, and how you respond to each stage determines how you will respond to the next. Resilience is physical but it’s emotional too – and I am sure a lot of predetermining factors are at play. When the fires raged through Malibu a couple years ago – there was harrowing cell phone footage from inside a car driving through the raging inferno. The guy driving had picked up a stranded woman – who was just falling apart, in tatters emotionally. Of course. The entire world was in flames., She was sobbing uncontrollably – it’s just heart-rending to listen to – and he, a stranger to her, talked to her calmly and collectedly – as he drove his way through literally a burning world. It’s like HER emotional disorientation somehow enacted in HIM a calm cool rationality – and maybe it helped him to deal with his OWN panic to help her? I don’t know! Nobody has a “right” way to respond to their world ending – it’s not like he was correct and she was wrong – but I couldn’t help but think – It’s a good thing he picked her up because she was in such a panic she wasn’t even able to THINK anymore. He just talked her through it, telling her they were going to be okay – and he’s saying that as he’s driving through a fire. It’s wild. Like, who would I be? would i be the woman or would I be the guy? Maybe it was her panic that brought out his cool calm leadership – like, she NEEDED him, and so he stepped up? I don’t know. It’s just interesting and I feel like Society of the Snow really allowed for those moments – where one person crumbled, another one rose – they had to take care of each other, and almost take turns “checking out”. Someone had to maintain their composure because survival depended on it.
The Shackleton story is a great example. And I forgot about Juliane Koepcke – her story is just unbelievable to me. Like … the guts and gumption … I just am in awe of courage like that.