Post by Javi on Jan 3, 2024 21:13:33 GMT
In 1972, a plane carrying a rugby team (plus friends and family) from Montevideo, Uruguay to Santiago, Chile crashed in the middle of the Andes. The survivors were stranded—left for dead—for 72 days. Most of the passengers died, some in the horrific crash itself, others in the gruelling weeks that followed. Many consider it the most remarkable survival story of the 20th century. In Uruguay, after only 50 years, it has risen to the stature of national myth, though one only talked about in hushed tones. For decades, the taboo at the center of it seemed too much: cannibalism.
How the director, J. A. Bayona, gets there is remarkable. The real story of the crash dispels many popular, generic notions about what would happen to “Man” in a post-apocalyptic setting: that man would be quickly reduced to the animal kingdom, that extreme selfishness would rule the day, etc. Sometimes, the facts of life prove popular consciousness wrong, and might expose the old Hobbesian dogma as rather puny, if not an outright fraud. That’s not to say the experience was some kind of Rousseau-like natural idyll, either. Far from it. The film is a pretty brutal watch, but it isn't a round of survival-of-the-fittest. (The survivors, most of whom had gone to the same Catholic school, compared the experience to Dante’s Inferno as well as his Paradiso).
The movie gets at the big “taboo” obliquely. Inside the wreckage, as the survivors share food and (biologically vital) human warmth, a primitive, communal atmosphere takes hold, and the movie has a special gravitas. At one point, you can almost smell the rot of the festering wounds and the bodies piling up, but that, too, becomes part of the atmosphere. When the notion of eating the flesh of the dead comes up, it seems born out of the group’s collective unconscious. It’s what they’re all thinking, while trying their damnedest not to think about it. At first, the antagonism between those professing the need to eat to stay alive and those horrified at the desecration and the spiritual implications seems insurmountable, mythic. But when food runs out and they find out (via radio) that the outside world is no longer looking for them, reality sets in, as impassible as the mountains. In the movie’s most superb image, we watch from inside the fuselage as two figures go into the snowstorm outside to do the butchering away from the group, so as to protect them from the calamitous truth. These scavengers hacking away in the Andes dusk seem alien and eerily close to us. It’s as if a Turner landscape went mad... the primitive made modern.
And yet outside this initial shock (and the shock is dramatically necessary), Bayona isn’t exhibitionistic. He purges the horror from it, and the eating of the fallen friends and family members becomes a daily ritual, which one survivor compares to the eating of the Host. (Every day is a Last Supper). This is the rare movie where the living and the dead share the protagonism. It isn’t a movie about individuals in the usual sense, and there are no truly memorable characters. Though the actors have great, authentic, memorable faces, one begins to think of this group of the living and the dead as a single human body. It is—literally—how they stay alive. This is such a great, original subject that the epic resonances pop up on their own: Bayona doesn’t need to exploit them. Maybe the film takes on a mythic quality because what we assumed to be mere human idealism turns out to be as hardy, as raw and elemental as all the biological imperatives. Before our eyes, these people begin to look like animals, but they don’t turn into animals. Whether in revolt or acceptance of their fate, they stay human. The old world isn’t wiped out in the snow. It transforms.
At times, I was reminded of Jan Troell’s The Flight of the Eagle (about a failed Swedish expedition to the Arctic), even though Bayona isn’t a film poet like Troell (though he tries his best), and Snow isn’t close to being the masterpiece Eagle is. But there’s a common epic theme of man in extremis. The psychological difference was that the men in Eagle were avid Romantics consciously seeking out follies and possibly self-destruction (the follies of conquistadors). The men in Snow are young men who avidly want to live. The pathos of annihilation that permeates the Troell film is totally absent here: this is a different kind of epic, and it refuses to be reduced to “man vs. nature”. It’s about people who weren’t trying to prove anything to themselves or the world, or indeed to nature. Nature, or rather, the Andes, are a foreign face, a deadly beauty and a question mark. Uruguay is a country of rolling hills and genial weather, unknown to snow even in deepest winter, so the dislocation that the survivors faced was twofold. And the Uruguayan cinematographer, Pedro Luque, shoots the mountains as if they were a newfound planet. The night scenes look like no human canvas: the stars pop like electric bulbs.
The actors do fine work. Enzo Vogrincic, the Uruguayan Adam Driver, plays Numa, and he has the natural authority of a leader. He’s the one who wants to press eastward to Argentina, and then westward to Chile. Agustín Pardella is the hippieish Nando Parrado, who has something of the adventurer in him, and Matías Recalt is the hobbit-like Roberto Canesa, a young doctor and realist. These two give the movie a shot of new life after bits of the second act become maudlin and excessively contemplative. The quest westward is as epic as anything in Tolkien. Sound by sound, detail by detail, the landscape changes, and life creeps back into the film... literally. When they come across the Chilean arriero west of the Andes, their euphoria is well earned.
Hard to tell how people will respond to this. There are no politics in a story like this. The movie acknowledges that Uruguay was under a military dictatorship at the time: it acknowledges it and moves on, as one does with facts of life. And there’s no sensationalism. The theatrical experience is overwhelming, but the movie may suffer on a TV screen. The voiceover doesn't work, and Michael Giacchino's score is often intrusive. There are also one or two talks about God and what it all means that fall flat (some things are better left unsaid). But Bayona has achieved a real epic work despite the defects--the first 2023 film that earns the "epic" label, with apologies to Nolan/Scorsese. Maybe Bayona succeeded by simply paying close attention to his subject. With Past Lives, the best of the Oscar contenders I've seen to date.
How the director, J. A. Bayona, gets there is remarkable. The real story of the crash dispels many popular, generic notions about what would happen to “Man” in a post-apocalyptic setting: that man would be quickly reduced to the animal kingdom, that extreme selfishness would rule the day, etc. Sometimes, the facts of life prove popular consciousness wrong, and might expose the old Hobbesian dogma as rather puny, if not an outright fraud. That’s not to say the experience was some kind of Rousseau-like natural idyll, either. Far from it. The film is a pretty brutal watch, but it isn't a round of survival-of-the-fittest. (The survivors, most of whom had gone to the same Catholic school, compared the experience to Dante’s Inferno as well as his Paradiso).
The movie gets at the big “taboo” obliquely. Inside the wreckage, as the survivors share food and (biologically vital) human warmth, a primitive, communal atmosphere takes hold, and the movie has a special gravitas. At one point, you can almost smell the rot of the festering wounds and the bodies piling up, but that, too, becomes part of the atmosphere. When the notion of eating the flesh of the dead comes up, it seems born out of the group’s collective unconscious. It’s what they’re all thinking, while trying their damnedest not to think about it. At first, the antagonism between those professing the need to eat to stay alive and those horrified at the desecration and the spiritual implications seems insurmountable, mythic. But when food runs out and they find out (via radio) that the outside world is no longer looking for them, reality sets in, as impassible as the mountains. In the movie’s most superb image, we watch from inside the fuselage as two figures go into the snowstorm outside to do the butchering away from the group, so as to protect them from the calamitous truth. These scavengers hacking away in the Andes dusk seem alien and eerily close to us. It’s as if a Turner landscape went mad... the primitive made modern.
And yet outside this initial shock (and the shock is dramatically necessary), Bayona isn’t exhibitionistic. He purges the horror from it, and the eating of the fallen friends and family members becomes a daily ritual, which one survivor compares to the eating of the Host. (Every day is a Last Supper). This is the rare movie where the living and the dead share the protagonism. It isn’t a movie about individuals in the usual sense, and there are no truly memorable characters. Though the actors have great, authentic, memorable faces, one begins to think of this group of the living and the dead as a single human body. It is—literally—how they stay alive. This is such a great, original subject that the epic resonances pop up on their own: Bayona doesn’t need to exploit them. Maybe the film takes on a mythic quality because what we assumed to be mere human idealism turns out to be as hardy, as raw and elemental as all the biological imperatives. Before our eyes, these people begin to look like animals, but they don’t turn into animals. Whether in revolt or acceptance of their fate, they stay human. The old world isn’t wiped out in the snow. It transforms.
At times, I was reminded of Jan Troell’s The Flight of the Eagle (about a failed Swedish expedition to the Arctic), even though Bayona isn’t a film poet like Troell (though he tries his best), and Snow isn’t close to being the masterpiece Eagle is. But there’s a common epic theme of man in extremis. The psychological difference was that the men in Eagle were avid Romantics consciously seeking out follies and possibly self-destruction (the follies of conquistadors). The men in Snow are young men who avidly want to live. The pathos of annihilation that permeates the Troell film is totally absent here: this is a different kind of epic, and it refuses to be reduced to “man vs. nature”. It’s about people who weren’t trying to prove anything to themselves or the world, or indeed to nature. Nature, or rather, the Andes, are a foreign face, a deadly beauty and a question mark. Uruguay is a country of rolling hills and genial weather, unknown to snow even in deepest winter, so the dislocation that the survivors faced was twofold. And the Uruguayan cinematographer, Pedro Luque, shoots the mountains as if they were a newfound planet. The night scenes look like no human canvas: the stars pop like electric bulbs.
The actors do fine work. Enzo Vogrincic, the Uruguayan Adam Driver, plays Numa, and he has the natural authority of a leader. He’s the one who wants to press eastward to Argentina, and then westward to Chile. Agustín Pardella is the hippieish Nando Parrado, who has something of the adventurer in him, and Matías Recalt is the hobbit-like Roberto Canesa, a young doctor and realist. These two give the movie a shot of new life after bits of the second act become maudlin and excessively contemplative. The quest westward is as epic as anything in Tolkien. Sound by sound, detail by detail, the landscape changes, and life creeps back into the film... literally. When they come across the Chilean arriero west of the Andes, their euphoria is well earned.
Hard to tell how people will respond to this. There are no politics in a story like this. The movie acknowledges that Uruguay was under a military dictatorship at the time: it acknowledges it and moves on, as one does with facts of life. And there’s no sensationalism. The theatrical experience is overwhelming, but the movie may suffer on a TV screen. The voiceover doesn't work, and Michael Giacchino's score is often intrusive. There are also one or two talks about God and what it all means that fall flat (some things are better left unsaid). But Bayona has achieved a real epic work despite the defects--the first 2023 film that earns the "epic" label, with apologies to Nolan/Scorsese. Maybe Bayona succeeded by simply paying close attention to his subject. With Past Lives, the best of the Oscar contenders I've seen to date.
