The Snow Society, the new film directed by the Spanish Juan Antonio Bayona and produced by Netflix, has become the fashionable film to the point of being one of the pre-candidates for the Oscar for best international film.
The success of this new production, according to critics, is due to key factors such as its technical resolution, the sound and, of course, the image, which manages to provide a completely credible narrative. And to achieve the maximum possible fidelity regarding the events on which the film is based, Bayona chose to trace some of the photographs that the real survivors took of the tragedy.
The film is based on the tragedy of the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in the Andes and the experience of the 16 survivors who spent 72 days fighting for their lives.
This production, which is the third adaptation of this event after ¡Viven! (Frank Marshall, 1993) and Survivors of the Andes (René Cardona, 1976) are told from the point of view of the survivors and the ordeal they had to go through after the accident. To reinforce this narrative, Bayona chooses to recreate several of the snapshots that the protagonists took during the more than 70 days that this incident lasted.
Among the recreations of the already known photographs, they stand out, for example, one taken within the same flight or another in which all the passengers of the flight leave in front of the plane at the Mendoza airport.
Naturally, several of the images refer to the ordeal experienced once the accident occurred. In several of them you can see the plane completely destroyed and several of the protagonists fighting against the cold and hunger.
Furthermore, the film shows how at the time of the rescue of the passengers of flight 571, a cameraman managed to record some images that moved the world: the survivors next to the wreckage of the plane greeting the rescuers.
These photographs that the survivors take during the course of the film emulating what happened in real life also serve to remind the viewer that behind these images there is a real story just as terrifying as the one shown on the screen.
The reproduction of the film is so reliable to the point that Strauch, one of the survivors, confessed in an interview that, after watching the film, his wife told him that she was not aware that it had been so hard. Thus, the survivors of the accident themselves have assured that the images that can be seen in the film are very real.
The Snow Society has been a total success, becoming Netflix's most watched movie of the last week. According to data from the production company, in its first four days, the film accumulated 22.9 million views, entering the top 10 of a total of 88 countries.
In addition, the film is highly valued by the academy to the point of getting 13 nominations for the Goya, a nomination for best foreign language film at the Golden Globes and two nominations for the Critics Choice Awards.
