“The Snow Company”: “Is it legal to eat a dead person?”

2024-01-03 18:18:20

The mountains are big, sometimes far too big. White is their color. In the cinema, snow and ice signal more danger and inhospitality than purity and innocence. Sometimes the chains of peaks and abysses seem endless. At one point in the film, three men climb a steep wall onto the ridge, they sit there for a long time and look into the distance. “Look how beautiful,” says one of the men, Roberto. The view is terrible. White and ice everywhere.

“It’s just a shame we’re going to die,” says the second man, Nando. “The Andes have to end somewhere,” says Roberto, “then the snow will disappear.” The third, called Tintin, decides to turn back. But Roberto and Nando go on, on and on. They want to return to civilization. To where it becomes green.

also read

“The Snow Company” tells of a famous plane accident. In October 1972, Flight 571 crashed in the Andes. The Uruguayan Air Force plane was supposed to fly from Montevideo to Santiago de Chile; There were 45 passengers on board, mostly players and staff from the Old Christian’s Club rugby team – which explains the high number of young men. “Lovingly raised, in houses right by the sea,” is what it once says about the players, of whom Nando Parrado (Agustín Pardella) has the strongest legs.

Corpses in the ice

While flying over the mountains, which are up to 6,000 meters high, a combination of weather and maneuvering errors caused it to crash at around 3,500 meters. The machine crashed, but a piece of the fuselage remained intact. 33 people survive, five more die on the first night at around minus 30 degrees. The film follows the facts and the logic of the disaster film: the conditions are terrible, warm clothing and food are hardly available, the group has to make arrangements in order to survive. They drag the bodies into the ice, care for the injured, and try to repair a radio.

The Spanish director JA Bayona tells this with compassion, but coolly, the hopelessness in the midst of inhospitable conditions is always visible. Machines fly over the area several times, but the group’s efforts are limited. The film assumes that the viewer already knows what is going to happen because, yes, because Flight 571 is not famous for crashing. But for the survival methods.

Behind the scenes of “The Snow Company”

What: Netflix

It begins with the young men imagining what they will eat after the rescue. They sit outside in the sun, which warms during the day, and smoke. There will be cigarettes – 1972! – not lacking until shortly before the end. Nando suggests eating the dead for protein and energy. The group is divided, some are horrified, others outraged, others fatalistic. When certain death is in sight, everything is justified.

also read

As hunger grows and bodies grow weaker, men scale the heights of discourse. Morality and theology are joined by law and medicine: “Is it legal to eat a dead person?” asks one. Basically, it’s “a kind of organ donation,” another objected. A third party gives verbal consent to be eaten in the event of his death. On the ninth day, the first man from the “Old Christian’s Club” goes out and eats the flesh of the dead.

The women suffer facelessly in the corner

The group soon acts pragmatically. Three cousins ​​do the cutting, so no one knows who the friends and relatives provided the survival food from. It is chewed and swallowed in pieces. Here too, the film remains subtle without hiding anything. The characters retain their dignity and the word “cannibalism” never appears. And the women are silent; the film leaves them out. It seems increasingly strange, as if they had not appeared in the surviving reports.

In perhaps the most famous plane crash film, “The Flight of the Phoenix”, a plane without women on board is lost in the Sahara Desert; the men have to rebuild the plane with the help of a German engineer in order to save themselves. In 1965, a film with male stars but completely devoid of women was unremarkable; in the (bad) 2004 remake there was at least one female character, and she had something to say. In the “snow society” the women lie faceless in the corner and suffer.

Escalation levels: It is announced on the radio that the search has been stopped. On day 16, a storm destroys the wreck again and traps the group for days. So much snow fills the picture until even the camera is full of snow. More people die, including the team captain. The radio is found three kilometers away, but the repair fails. The thaw begins on day 34. Even emergency food is becoming scarce. On December 12th, day 61, Nando, Roberto and Tintin set off, crossing, among other things, a 4,650 meter high peak, weak and in miserable shoes.

Bitter heroic stories

Comparatively more planes crash in the cinema than in reality, and big trials always begin. They are bitter heroic stories, nourished by fear of disaster. In 1993, the cinema celebrated a high mass with three crash works. In “Cliffhanger” Sly Stallone gymnastics through the Rocky Mountains – although it was filmed in the Dolomites because of the more spectacular rocks. The crashed plane contains $100 million. In “Fearless!”, a plane has to land spectacularly and disastrously in a cornfield in the same year; it is the story of a survivor, Jeff Bridges, who no longer seems to be afraid.

And in “Survival!”, the disaster of Flight 571 in the Andes was also made into a Hollywood film in 1993; Ethan Hawke played Nando Parrado. There are also plays, novellas, novels, documentaries and natural survival stories about eating in the ice.

also read

„Girl You Know It’s True“

“The Snow Company” gets to grips with the characters and their suffering in two and a half hours. The group dynamics and the will to survive are played out as well as at least half-pleased snow fights. The men become numb and endure their fate more or less motionless. At one point, numerous skeletons can be seen outside; it was eaten thoroughly and beyond organ donation. However, the documentary gesture does not help to overcome weaknesses, on the contrary. The script does not develop characters, but rather respectfully depicts the results. The characters lack an individual life of their own; it doesn’t seem to matter who refuses or accepts food and for what reasons. The drama takes place at icy heights, but only makes powdery attempts to climb even further.

The film tells a gripping story about the enormous task in the midst of fantastic scenery. However, because the historical ending is somewhat known, there is a bit of a lack of excitement. If you get bored, you can ask yourself what the repetitions were like during filming due to the many shots with untouched snow cover. Did the mountain have to be changed because of visible footsteps? Were there prescribed paths for the crew? Did the wind overnight help blow everything away again? Filming the innocence of the mountains is accompanied by many barriers.

“The Snow Company” will be available on Netflix from January 4, 2024.