Naturally, the “Miracle of the Andes” was prime characteristic movie materials, and Society of the Snow isn’t the primary and even the second filmed model of the story. The primary, 1976’s Survive!, was a Mexican manufacturing directed by Rene Cardona, greatest recognized for exploitation cheapies like Night time of the Bloody Apes. Survive! does play like a low-rent shockfest, with primitive visible results, atrocious dubbing, and an emphasis on gore. Hollywood, in the meantime, picked up the story in 1993 when Touchstone Photos tailored Alive from a nonfiction e book of the identical identify by Piers Paul Learn. Directed by Frank Marshall (Arachnophobia), the film stars Ethan Hawke, Josh Hamilton, and a largely white solid because the aircraft’s passengers. A modest hit on the field workplace, the movie has that slick veneer that solely a Hollywood studio can present, however has however stood for 30 years as the key cinematic telling of the story.
With this in thoughts, let’s evaluate Alive and Society of the Snow and see how they’re completely different, how they’re alike, and whether or not one is healthier than the opposite.
Hollywood Opening vs. A Non secular Framing Gadget
For essentially the most half, Alive and Society of the Snow precisely inform the story of Flight 571 in very comparable, and in some circumstances nearly beat-for-beat, vogue. However each make distinct narrative selections alongside the best way: Alive opens and closes with a framing gadget by which John Malkovich portrays an older model of Carlitos Páez, one of many survivors who’s performed as a youthful man by Bruce Ramsay. Carlitos affords just a few phrases initially and finish of the story. It’s a reasonably pointless train that provides nothing of substance to the narrative. Malkovich even actually says, “I’ve nothing extra to say” on the finish of the movie. So the actual story begins instantly afterward, with Marshall placing us proper on the aircraft minutes earlier than it crashes.
Society of the Snow has a extra poetic framing gadget, however one which arguably makes even much less sense. The story is narrated in voiceover by a personality who really dies two-thirds of the best way by the image (Enzo Vogrincic’s Numa Turcatti). Because the movie goes on it emphasizes a religious element by way of Numa’s ghostly sacrifice, however it doesn’t fairly land. Society additionally begins on the bottom, displaying just a few snippets of the crew members and different passengers making ready to depart, earlier than getting onto the aircraft as nicely.
From there, the key occasions of the story—the crash, the preliminary makes an attempt to outlive and ration out what little meals they’ve, the missions to seek out the aircraft’s tail part and retrieve a radio battery, the choice to eat the lifeless, the terrifying avalanche that took the lives of almost half the remaining survivors, and the ultimate stroll by Canessa and Nando Parrado—happen in each movies in just about the very same sequence. Some particulars are altered or compressed alongside the best way, however the primary narrative is similar.
An Journey Story vs. A Gritty Story of Survival
Frank Marshall has been primarily a producer for many of his profession—as co-founder of Amblin Leisure together with his spouse, Kathleen Kennedy, and Steven Spielberg, in addition to by his and Kennedy’s personal manufacturing firm—and he has been behind among the greatest hits of the previous 50 years. He’s additionally directed 4 options (and a handful of documentaries), together with Alive, and whereas his course on this movie is competent, it’s additionally pretty workmanlike.
