We Live In A Society
“We Live in a Society,” and Other (Better) Commentaries in Society of the Snow
By Elizabeth Rotunno
We, as humans, love disaster—not necessarily being stricken by some devastating misfortune, but at least engaging with it as a subject of great societal intrigue and fascination. Maybe it’s proof that humanity, like the rest of the universe, tends toward entropy, or perhaps we’re just bored and want to live vicariously through the victims of zombie apocalypses and world-ending asteroids. Either way, catastrophe is always a hit in horror and psychological suspense films. Recently, an especially tragic specimen of calamity dipped its toes into the Oscars scene, nominated as part of the critically acclaimed 2023 movie Society of the Snow (originally La Sociedad de La Nieve).
Set in 1972, the movie follows a Uruguayan rugby team after they crash in the freezing Andes mountains of Western Argentina. The young players must await rescue, relying only on each other and the wreckage of their airliner to survive. After extending their food supply much longer than it was meant to last and consuming anything semi-resembling a comestible, some players resort to eating each other to stay alive, while others mount efforts to escape the glacial prison into which they’ve plunged. The real kicker? Society of the Snow is based on the true story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 and is adapted from a novel of the same name by Pablo Vierci, detailing the incident. The adaptation is fairly faithful to the original story, making Society of the Snow an interesting case study into human behavior surrounding self-organization. So what does it teach us about how we act in group survival situations?
Although this topic is more closely related to the event than the movie itself, director J.A. Bayona’s subtle and considered narrative choices present a message far more insightful than a mere “humans do what it takes to survive,” as many survival movies are wont to espouse.
Drawing on Vierci’s original book title, Bayona emphasizes the role of the society in the team’s eventual salvation. The young men don’t devolve into disorganized chaos, they don’t attack each other for food, and many of them initially refuse to eat their dead comrades. Instead, matters are resolved with civil discourse, in a style that’s almost reminiscent of a Socratic Seminar. Eventually, a system emerges: two cousins volunteer to “prepare,” as it were, corpses for consumption, meting out rations to the rest of the team. Their captain, Marcelo, retains his authority with the team and slides into the role of leader. All the while, everyone is sustained and connected by their faith in God and their mandates as Catholics. Their morphing of cannibalism into an organized ritual acts as the most obvious symbol for the collective developmental direction the team moves in: collaboration and order.
Bayona positions these internal hierarchies that the team erects against the concept of external societal reliance. Punctuating the movie’s sequences of harrowing events is a radio broadcast relaying news of rescue missions, which get bleaker and bleaker. In response to the rescue efforts proving largely unsuccessful, the young men increasingly fall back onto their established organizational structure as a sports team. As such, the eventual news that rescue efforts have ceased symbolizes a significant departure, a severance, from reliance on the social constructs of the outside world. What good are planes and search parties if they exist only in words, bearing no material influence upon one’s actual situation? Bayona here indicates that the dwindling influence of established civilization becomes analogous to the growing independence of the rugby team, as they rely upon an internal, rather than external, functional structure. The explicit portrayal of this inverse relationship is quite possibly what distinguishes Society of the Snow’s narrative from its thematic peers: it’s a hopeful film. It shows us that perseverance and collaboration in the face of adversity are not only possible but can be a sustaining force.
Society of the Snow doesn’t attempt to simulate total collapse or tell us that humans are incapable of overcoming existential threats. Rather, it shines through in its distinct optimism, and its unwavering faith in the social, collaborative, human spirit that first gave rise to civilization millennia ago.
