2023-12-17 12:11:26
Because of its unique capacity to astonish, move, inspire and horrify, the event known as the ‘Tragedy of the Andes’ -but also like the ‘Miracle of the Andes’- has come to acquire an almost mythical status: on October 13, 1972, Flight 571 of the Uruguayan Air Force crashed into a glacier in the longest mountain range in the world, and 16 of its 45 passengers They returned home 72 days later after having experienced extreme situations to survive, including human meat intake.
The last film to recreate that drama is the new one by JA Bayona, ‘The Snow Society’, which has just arrived in theaters. Much has been said about her and, given her circumstances – she is the Spanish representative in the fight for Oscar, and is nominated for the Golden Globe -, much will continue to be done. Below we highlight some of the titles that, through fiction or in documentary format, They did it before her.
Survivors of the Andes (1976)
A Mexican production, it combines its portrait of the odyssey suffered by the survivors with a Time.news of the mistakes made by the authorities during their search. Address anthropophagy without regard: includes more than enough scenes during which meat is torn from the bones, dried and eaten, and images of severed corpses, intestines protruding from frozen bodies and wounded legs oozing pus.
Despite all this, it is a generally respectful film, and at times capable of generating the type of emotion that one would not expect from its director, Rene Cardonaalso responsible for ‘Those who fought against the killer robot’ (1969) y ‘Saint in Dracula’s Treasure (1969). On the occasion of its release in the United States, it was reedited to emphasize the most morbid aspects of the story, and advertised practically as a horror film. serie B.
They live! (1993)
For 20 years it has been the most famous film on the subject. Although it is based on the acclaimed non-fiction book of the same name published by Piers Paul Read in 1974, does not bother to recreate the social structure that, as described in those pages, was created and maintained during those 10 weeks in the Andes. It’s a film less interested in sociology than in doing what Hollywood often does best: creating colorful images of destruction and avalanches and season them with climatic moments and strokes of vague spirituality.
Shows a timorous and somewhat insincere attitude both towards the human meat consumption -he seems ashamed to talk about it even though if the anthropophagy had not occurred the film would not exist- as well as the dimensions of that epic in general. It is difficult for any of us to imagine the difficulties those people went through, and ‘They live’ It doesn’t make it easier.
They Live: Miracle in the Alps (1993)
Designed as a complement to fiction’They live‘, is supported above all by the testimony of survivor Nando Parrado, who lost his mother and sister in the accident – he discovered it days later, after waking up from a coma – and who, together with his partner Roberto Canesa, He walked 70 kilometers between mountains at 4,000 meters above sea level until he found the signs of civilization that led to the rescue.
Includes images showing several of the survivors visiting the filming of ‘They live’, affected by the fidelity of the recreation, and some remember the discussions that took place within the group about whether eat the flesh of your deceased friends It was the right thing. All of them give the sensation of being men eternally marked, not so much by anthropophagy as by the memory of a test of human resistance whose magnitude no one else can understand.
Castaways: I come from a plane that fell in the mountains (2007)
It combines archival audiovisual material, decorous recreations – designed not to provoke fear or repulsion but to convey desolation – and fragments of interviews with survivors, who more than three decades later prove to remember even the most seemingly insignificant detail.
In them they reflect on their decision to feed off your friends muertos From the biological, logistical and philosophical point of view: those who returned home, thanks to the assistance of those who did not, have created a descendant that totals more than one hundred people. And, for them, furthermore, Eating that meat became a ritual that someone in the documentary compares to the Holy Communionn. For all this, together, the film works as an incontrovertible defense of the need for solidarity and team mentality in the face of catastrophe.
I am alive: surviving the Andes plane crash (2010)
Also focused on the figure of Nando Parrado, Its main objective is to provide data and clarify technical doubts. What exact path did the plane follow when it fell? Where exactly did it crash? How many vehicles of the same model -Fairchild FH-227- they suffered accidents along the history, and how many people died on board them? What type of injuries did the collision cause to the passengers? How did they manage to build a radio and an ice melting system? These practical questions are answered here.
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