The film adaptation of ‘The Snow Society’ by Juan Antonio Bayona has swept the Goya awards for Spanish cinema, winning 12 awards, and is now nominated for the Oscars. Since the first day of its release on December 14 in theaters and January 4 on Netflix, it has been the most viewed film in Spanish.
The film ‘The Snow Society’ tells the story of the accident of flight 571 of the Uruguayan Air Force in the Andes mountain range on October 13, 1972. That flight was taking the Uruguayan rugby team Old from Montevideo to Santiago de Chile. Christians Club. They did not reach their destination. A mistake by the pilot who had started the descent of the aircraft ahead of time triggered the tragedy. Of the 45 people on board (40 passengers and 5 crew) 29 survived the brutal impact.
The survivors – in the end only 16 were saved – suffered extreme hardship, cold, frostbite, thirst but above all, hunger, such starvation that they had to decide to use – overcoming the natural horror that this entailed – the bodies of the deceased. . The film tells the story of the survivors through the eyes of those who did not return, a tribute to those who were not saved since they are the true heroes, those who gave everything, including their own flesh with which they could feed themselves. the survivors.
Thanks to their youth, between 18 and 23 years old, because they were athletes, and to the proximity of the southern summer, two boys Nando Parrado, 20 years old, and Roberto Canessa, 19, set out on December 12 to climb a peak without any equipment. Andean mountain of more than 4,600 m of altitude and descended through a valley already on the border with Chile, where they met the muleteer, Sergio Catalán, who made the rescue possible on December 21, after having traveled about 60 km of mountain.
We knew this story of survival, told and retold…But this human, sensitive and emotional exploration that Bayona makes was not told. Making the film based on the story told 35 years after the catastrophe by the same protagonists is very valuable and also more credible after all that time, at least, compared to those made shortly after the accident. The Spanish director demonstrates his obsession with telling the complete story, including the story of the deceased, through their families for whom it had never been well told.
«We must return to the past, knowing that the past is what changes the most»
With this premise, JA Bayona sent the author of ‘The Snow Society’ Pablo Vierci a letter in 2011: “The Snow Society is one of the most impressive, inspiring and revealing stories I have ever read. Time has passed and the memory of your story continues to move us.
And I can’t help but think that when I closed the book I had the feeling that I didn’t really know the story I thought I knew, that what I had read or seen before was just the tip of the iceberg of what really happened there and that its trip should be told on the big screen with the same intensity with which I devoured the pages.
After being dazzled by Vierci’s book in 2009 he decided to shoot the film. It had such an impact on him – says Bayona – that he even used it during the filming of The Impossible, reading fragments of the book to the actors.
A film that reconciles us with the human condition
It is the fight for life, the film puts you in the fuselage, in the despair, and in the hope of those boys alone in the middle of the cosmos, who resisted that avalanche that killed part of those who had been saved from the accident. The hell they must have experienced sleeping among the inert bodies of their dead companions is palpable, but also the fight to survive and the satisfaction of those who were saved in the end.
And Pablo Vierci, twice awarded the National Literature Prize of Uruguay, in addition to recounting the accident, goes further. It focuses on the feelings of the survivors but also of those who were not saved, the terrifying fear they experienced, the desperation of seeing their companions die, of thinking, who would be next, the helplessness of feeling that everyone is going to die, forgotten there, “buried” in the bowels of nothingness.
Numa, the young narrator of the story in the film who is not saved, was one of those who had the most problems when it came to feeding on the bodies and, however, he ends up doing so.
«Really, you have to have lived it to understand that one is capable of doing that and more to survive. It is a question of live or die and there is only one option left,” says Roberto Canessa.
“The impressive thing about the story is that people think that the most terrible thing was having to eat the bodies. There are two ways of seeing it: that of those outside, and that of those of us who were the Snow Society. Judgment cannot come from outside, it is something that has to come from within. When someone died, you felt sorry for them, but you also felt sorry for yourself, because you were next on the waiting list. We had to do this whole metamorphosis. “We feel the deepest poverty that a human being can have,” reflects Canessa.
This is how camaraderie, fraternity, compassion, the dedication of even your own body arises so that it can help others continue. An extreme example of generosity is documented in a letter from Coco Nicolich, one of the boys who died in the avalanche: “Even though it may seem like a lie, we started using the bodies… If the time came for me to die, I would gladly do it.” It was a history of organ donation.
«We were never better than in the mountains»
The codes of society are valid up to a certain point, but in these circumstances new ones must be created because the laws that govern down, on the plain, are not those that govern in the mountains.
There were 16 survival formulas. Each one had their own way. They have all written books and given lectures, especially Nando Parrado, who is the most popular in the media, but they all agree in stating: “We have never been better than in the mountains.”
Another survivor, Pedro Algorta, took refuge in his individualism, he lived low, he tried not to waste energy to survive. He also wrote his own book (The Mountains Are Still There). For him, God was the driving force that helped them remain united and strong in the mountains. “God was with us, in our strength to live, in the strength that he gave to Canessa and Parrado to go out for a walk,” he says in his book. “God appeared in the community, in silence, in his neighbor.”
«Everything is in harmony there, except us»
What you hear most in the mountain is yourself, your breathing and your steps, everything is in harmony there, except us. That sensation leads you to feel alone in the cosmos and being alone induces you to create a new society.
From that feeling of deep loneliness, Nando Parrado recognizes that his fuel was fear: “I moved out of fear, fear of staying here, of not returning”… In his book ‘The Miracle of the Andes’ (2006), he says that He shouldn’t have been alive but a series of small miracles happened. Miracle to survive in addition to the hard blow he received to the head, for which he was half dead for three days, to cope with the death of his mother and his sister.
But as he always emphasizes: In those extreme moments: “the survival instinct protects you, the brain focuses on the here and now on everything that has to do with survival, if not, you die.”
As Canessa says: «you don’t have to stop, you have to keep walking; “Human beings have the capacity to transform into society, and those who do not adapt do not survive.”
“Success or failure was not the goal. My mission – he says – was to try, this gave me strength… I was going to go as far as I could and as far as God would accompany me. It is a feeling that I apply in my life and that works very well for me. When I am going to operate on a patient, and the intervention is very difficult, I always walk as far as I can.
“You can’t until you can.”
Roberto Canessa, a cardiologist, was in October 1972 a young 19-year-old rubby player and a medical student who co-starred with his partner Nando Parrado in the final walk, the long journey through the Andean mountain range of more than 4,600 m of altitude that structures the American continent, a journey of more than 60 kilometers without adequate equipment or clothing, sleeping in the open, without any knowledge of mountains.
When Canessa is asked in the many interviews about what he learned after that impressive feat, he always emphasizes that “The pain, the emotions, the passion, lead you to cry…, but not to stop if you have a reason to live.” .
But – complete – that same reason should also serve to stop us. Let us remember the case of his companion, Numa Turcatti, who came out immediately and badly injured in her desire to help, without thinking and immolated herself. Numa had the courage of a bull, but he lacked loving himself more. As another survivor, Coche Iciarte, said, “I was saved because I was stingier. Numa gave everything.”
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