Monday, February 19, 2024

Society of the Snow (2023)

Nominated for Best International Feature and Best Hair and Makeup    Content warning:  cannibalism, frostbite, plane crash violence

In 1972, a plane carrying 40 passengers and 5 crew, including an Uruguayan rugby team, crashed in the Andes.  Twenty-seven people survived the initial crash but faced slow death by exposure and starvation as they waited for rescue.  They chose to live by eating the dead.

This is based on a true event and had already been made into a movie once before in 1993:  Alive, starring Ethan Hawke.  I've never seen it so I can't say if it's better or worse than this one.  

If I had to pick one word to describe this film, it would be morose.  There is palpable despair in every frame for two and a half hours.  Your mileage on that may vary but I found it overlong.  Like, it just kept going.  (This part gets a little spoiler-y so I'm putting it in white text.)  **SPOILERS**  The narrator died and there was still 40 minutes left.  The rescue helicopter showed up and there was somehow still 23 minutes left.  **END SPOILERS** I still got through the whole thing in one sitting, minus a lunch break because I am not without a sense of irony.  The only thing that threw me momentarily was forgetting that seasons are reversed in the Southern hemisphere so a thaw in November is normal, not weird.  

Anyway, the only thing most people focus on is the cannibalism but this is a survival story first and foremost.  These boys were athletes and they were trapped in one of the most inhospitable to life places on the planet.  There was zero expectation they would survive and yet, human resilience is an incredibly force.

It's currently streaming on Netflix.

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