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Review
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Gripping, accurate account of 1972 plane crash in the Andes
that stranded a group of rugby players in the barren,
snow-covered mountains with no food or shelter, except for
the remains of the fuesalage. After realizing that the
search for them had been called off, they resort to
cannibalism to survive for 90 days. With renewed strength,
they embark on several expeditions, to find the tail
section and the bodies of passengers who were sucked through
the back of the plane as it crashed. In spite of the
salacious subject matter, the film is restrained and sombre,
emphasizing the role of the passenger's devout catholicism
in their survival, and in their decision to eat the bodies
of their dead colleagues. The dialogue is wobbly and the
acting is weak among the secondary characters, but the
story is compelling, and the scenary (British Columbia
stood in for the Andes) is stunning. The real story was
probably more sensational than the version told in the
movie. They actually ran out of "meat", and had to climb up
to retrieve bodies of the other passengers, as they began
to run out. One of the passengers who fell out of the
plane as it slid down a snow covered valley, strode off in
the wrong direction and fell off a precipice. The actual
rescue took two days as bad weather intervened and the
helicopters could only remove three survivors each at a
time. And odd, interesting postscript: an extraordinary
percentage of the survivors went on to rather illustrious
careers in business, television, and politics. This
suggests one of two things: they were all from upper class
families to begin with, and the ordeal did no permanent
damage, or that something about surviving the awful
conditions contributed something to their characters, which
helped them do well in their lives afterwards.
Extraordinary story, and extraordinary movie.
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