‘Snow Society’
Manager: JA Bayona
Artists: Enzo Vogrincic, Agustín Pardela, Matías Recalt
Year: 2023
Premiere: 12/15/23
★★★★
As it is said at one point in the movie, most of the survivors of the Uruguay Airlines plane that crashed in the Andes Mountains on October 13, 1972 were young people who grew up lovingly in houses near the sea. JA Bayona He reinforces this idea with evocative, brilliant shots of these young members of a rugby team before the tragedy.. For many, this was their first plane trip away from their comfort zone. Not all of the survivors survived the hunger, cold and avalanches. After 71 days, only 16 people were rescued.
Bayona films and stages the accident in a very physical way: bodies crushing each other, legs breaking… The person who filmed the tsunami in ‘Impossible’ could not have it any other way. Then concentrate on this long period of survival. On the first night, we go through a perfect three-point sequence, from a shot of a man asking for water to a shot of the frozen man himself. Ethical, legal, and religious debates soon arose about the right and responsibility of eating human flesh for survival—all of them were. Bayona almost modestly films shots of them cutting and eating meat from corpses. Some black urine on the snow. Another one of those belts whose buckle no longer has a hole to hold on to.
It speaks of those who survived, but also of those who died. The film is a tribute to the dead. The use of narrative voice is very interesting in this sense and is what gives meaning and differentiates ‘The Snow Society’ from other films that deal with this story of survival.