More Dead than Alive 

Y ou probably know the story. On October 13, 1972, an Uruguayan plane carrying the Old Christians Club rugby team crashed in the Andes on its way to Chile. In the immediate aftermath, rescue missions were attempted, but after no sightings, all 45 people on board were presumed dead. In fact, while twelve people died on impact when the aircraft’s tail and wings snapped off, 33 survived the initial crash. In the weeks that followed, six more died from their injuries and then eight more died in an avalanche. Nearly two months after the crash, on December 12, two survivors, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, began a twelve-day trek across the mountain range into Chile for help, which proved successful. The remaining survivors were rescued by helicopter before Christmas.

Freezing temperatures were both a blessing and a curse. Living conditions inside the plane fuselage were incredibly harsh, and the survivors were weakened by exposure. But the surrounding snow provided a water supply, not to mention a meat freezer. With only a small supply of snacks on board, the survivors had no choice but to eat the flesh of their deceased friends and relatives to avoid starving to death.

Not long after their rescue, the testimony of the survivors was collected by writer Piers Paul Read, then a 31-year-old British novelist, who in 1974 published his narrative non-fiction book, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors. Read wrote: “At times I was tempted to fictionalize certain parts of the story because this might have added to their dramatic impact but in the end, I decided that the bare facts were sufficient to sustain the narrative.”

He added:

When I returned in October in 1973 to show them the manuscript of this book, some of them were disappointed by my presentation of their story. They felt that the faith and friendship which inspired them in the cordillera do not emerge from these pages. It was never my intention to underestimate these qualities, but perhaps it would be beyond the skill of any writer to express their own appreciation of what they lived through.

Nevertheless, others have tried, seemingly in vain. In 1993, a Hollywood adaptation of Read’s account was made in the movie Alive, which emphasized faith and friendship and heroism. This pleased the survivors. “The friendship, courage, the decision-making was very real,” Canessa said. “The film has all the dimensions of what happened.” Yet the same qualities displeased some critics, who felt the movie skimped over the characters’ “personalities or private thoughts,” and was unrealistically “upbeat” for such grim subject matter.

The more recent Netflix, Spanish-language remake, directed by J. A. Bayona (The Orphanage) and filmed at the crash site, aims for a more comprehensive account.

If Read’s account and the movie spin-off are titled Alive, then Bayona’s Society of the Snow, based on Pablo Vierci’s 2008 book of the same name (La Sociedad de la nieve), might be better titled Dead.

Society of the Snow intends to pay tribute to the dead, but it memorializes their deaths more than their lives.

Take the character of Liliana, a young wife and mother, who survived the crash but died weeks later along with seven others during an avalanche. In the 1993 film, Alive, Liliana (Illeana Douglas) is vibrant and maternal. She tells her husband, Javier, that their brush with death in the plane crash has given her a new appreciation of the value of life and the desire to have another child. In Society of the Snow, Liliana (Paula Baldini) is more a prop than a character. Her husband says how, during the avalanche, he felt a surge of love for her “lifeless corpse” and realized that he “had a purpose . . . to take that love and bring it to my kids back home.”

Religion hangs in the backdrop. At the beginning of the movie, we see the team at Mass, as the priest reads the Gospel, “Man shall not live on bread alone,” clearly foreshadowing events to come. Scripture appears later, too, with an invocation of John 15:13: “No greater love has man than this, that he should lay down his life for his friends.” Survivors make the sign of the cross and pray. But the most important themes are underdeveloped or contradicted.

In deciding to eat the dead, the survivors compare the practice to organ donation. In Alive, both the book and the movie, we learn that the Catholic group made a theological comparison with the Eucharist, as one survivor told Read: “When Christ died he gave his body to us so that we could have spiritual life. My friend has given us his body so that we can have physical life.”

The mysterious reality is that if everyone had survived the initial crash, then everyone would also have died of hunger. Thus, the deaths of some enabled the survival of others. The survivors made sense of this in their belief that who lived and who died was for God alone to decide, as is made clear in the 1993 movie, when the pilot, suffering terribly from his injuries, begs the others to shoot him. They refuse — praying with and comforting the dying instead.

In Society of the Snow, the faith articulated is less in a God who redeems suffering and his providence, and more in human spirit and their own efforts. Arturo Nogueira (Fernando Contigiani), who is injured and dying, says:

I believe in another god. I believe in the god that Roberto keeps inside his head when he comes to heal each of my wounds. In the god that Nando keeps in his legs and that lets him continue walking no matter what. I believe in Daniel’s hands when he cuts the meat. And Fito, when he gives it to us without saying which of our friends it belonged to. That way, we can eat without having to remember their faces. That’s the god I believe in. I believe in Roberto. In Nando. In Daniel. In Fito. And in our dead friends.

The survivors complain that the state they’re in “isn’t alive.” That they “won’t make it just by praying” — as if anyone said they would. When Canessa (Matías Recalt) and Parrado (Agustín Pardella) admire the view on their trek for rescue, Canessa says it’s a shame their appreciation of the natural beauty is in vain: “Too bad we’re dead.”

Repetitive sequences of survivors clambering up the mountainside, wading through snow, and squinting into the sun add little in the way of narrative momentum and, an hour or so in, the movie begins to drag.

Our narrator, Numa Turcatti (Enzo Vogrincic), dies with an hour of the movie still to go and, nevertheless, continues to be the narrator. “I died on December 11, 1972. In my sleep,” he says. He describes the survivors’ homecoming as “overwhelming,” explaining that “they don’t feel like heroes,” because “they were dead like us, only they got to return home.” As for what it all means, he explains: “You’ll need to find out yourself. ’Cause the answer is in you.”

None of the philosophical musings are ever made coherent, never mind resolved. Society of the Snow doesn’t have the confidence to assert nihilism, but neither does it seriously engage with the Catholicism on which many of the survivors relied. Muddled philosophy, a vague assertion of human endurance, and poor editing fail to give life to this astonishing story.