Society of the Snow (Spanish: La sociedad de la nieve) is a 2023 survivalthriller film directed by J. A. Bayona, centered around the Uruguayan 1972 Andes flight disaster.[5] It is an adaptation of Pablo Vierci's book of the same name,[6] which documents the accounts of all 16 survivors of the crash, many of whom Vierci knew from childhood.[7] The cast is composed of Uruguayan and Argentine actors, most of whom are newcomers.[8]
The film closed the 80th Venice International Film Festival in an Out of Competition slot.[9] It was theatrically released in Uruguay on 13 December 2023,[10] in Spain on 15 December 2023,[11] and in the US on 22 December 2023,[12] before streaming on Netflix on 4 January 2024.[13]
In 1972, the Uruguayan Air Force flight 571, chartered to transport a rugby team to Santiago, Chile, experiences an unexpected incident and crashes into a glacier in the heart of the Andes. Of the 45 passengers on board, only 16 manage to survive. Trapped in one of the most inaccessible and hostile environments on the planet, they are forced to resort to cannibalism to stay alive. Their survival will depend on the decisions they make in the midst of this desperate situation.
Bayona discovered Vierci's book while researching for his 2012 film The Impossible, and bought the rights for the book when he finished filming that movie. The filmmakers recorded more than 100 hours of interviews with all of the living survivors. The actors had contact with the survivors and the families of the victims.[20]Society of the Snow was announced in November 2021.
Principal photography took place in Sierra Nevada, Spain; Montevideo, Uruguay; Chile and Argentina, including the actual crash site in the Andes.[21] Filming in Sierra Nevada lasted from 10 January to 29 April 2022.[22][15] Filming in Uruguay concluded in late July 2022,[18][23][15] and the production continued in Madrid.[18] Production took the total of 138 shooting days, with its budget reported to be over €65 million.[24]
In August 2021, the second unit, headed by Alejandro Fadel [es], Argentine director of Murder Me, Monster, filmed landscapes in Chile for reference in on-set virtual production and post-production.[8][7][25] In Sierra Nevada, the production was challenged by a scarcity of snow, and by Saharan Air Layer which covered the mountains with orange dust.[8][26] Three replicas of fuselage wreckages were used: one was placed in a hangar built on a parking lot,[27] another was buried in artificial snow and supported by a hydraulic crane that allowed for it to be moved, and the third was placed above a tarn at an altitude of 3,000 m (9,800 ft).[7][8][25] In the hangar, a 30-metre-tall screen displayed the second unit's footage of the Andes.[8][26][25] The third unit was tasked with more dangerous mountain shots.[8] The three units consisted of around 300 workers.[7][8]
David Martí and Montse Ribé, Academy Award–winning special effects makeup artists of Pan's Labyrinth, created prosthetic corpses and wounds.[8][25] Post-production was planned to last about five months involving 300 personnel.[8][7] Vierci, who serves as an associate producer, visited the set in Sierra Nevada.[7]
Bayona showed an early version of the film to one of the survivors, José Luis "Coche" Inciarte, before he died in July 2023.[24] The 14 remaining survivors saw the film one or two months prior to the premiere.[24][20]
The film was programmed for a technical screening run from 20 to 26 October 2023 in the Cine Aragonia of Zaragoza.[31] It received a Spanish theatrical release on 15 December 2023[32] and was released in US theatres on 22 December 2023.[12]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 91% of 149 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "Society of the Snow brings masterful technical skill to bear on its tale of real-life tragedy, but none of that spectacle comes at the expense of its simple, powerful message."[33]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 72 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[34]
Guy Lodge of Variety deemed the film to be a "brawnily effective tear-jerker", "which grips with alternating waves of dread, horror and heart-swelling relief, even as it can hardly surprise".[35]
Wendy Ide of ScreenDaily wrote that the film "is elevated by bracingly muscular action sequences".[36]
Pete Hammond of Deadline wrote that Bayona made a "story of how humanity comes together for each other in the worst of circumstances, how faith can see us through, and the sheer will to live involved in just simply pulling off a miracle by never giving up".[37]
David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Bayona reclaims "the real-life tragedy and story of human resilience... with authenticity and chilling realism, with emotion but without sensationalism", underscoring the film to be "uneven but ultimately effective".[38]
Professor Jorge Majfud (author of Cine político latinoamericano) argues that this version repeats the plot of previous films without a rereading to justify it, because a film is a commercial phenomenon that exploits a tragedy that complies with racial and class patterns, which he suggests is typical of the dominant Anglo-Saxon cultural industry.[39]
Top ten lists
The film appeared on a number of critics' top ten lists of the best Spanish films of 2023:
