‘Society of the Snow’ Review: J.A. Bayona Wrests the Andes Flight Disaster Away From Hollywood
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic Frank Marshall’s film “Alive” has never exactly been a classic, but for a certain bracket of moviegoers who saw it in 1993, it remains a vivid memory.
A heart-in-mouth recreation of the 1972 Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash — from which 16 people eventually survived 72 days stranded in a remote, snowy stretch of the Andes in western Argentina, while 29 perished — it visualized the events past the remit of worldwide news reports and magazine stories.
For those of us too young to remember, it became our first point of contact with the saga, triggering countless aerophobic nightmares and “what would you do” discussions relating to its most lurid details. “Alive” was well enough made and well enough acted to stick, yet it never felt ideal that such preppy all-American actors as Ethan Hawke and Josh Hamilton, speaking in Yank-accented English, became the faces of this South American story in the popular imagination.
That’s one solid reason for J.A. Bayona to retell the tale — with an unstarry, fully Spanish-speaking cast — in his brawnily effective tear-jerker “Society of the Snow,” which grips with alternating waves of dread, horror and heart-swelling relief, even as it can hardly surprise.
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