FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
The epic Snow Society, Spain's contender for this year's Oscar for Best International Film, is directed by JA Bayona, whose 2007 film The Orphanage remains one of the scariest paranormal films of all time. .
But no horror from a gothic movie comes close to the horror story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, the plane that crashed in the Andes in 1972, with survivors surviving on melted snow, some cookies and… cannibalism. Despite the sensationalism of what was an incredible story, any kind of telling of it requires respect, both for the dead and the living.
Bayona fulfills these standards, which also happened with several other adaptations that have been made of the event, the best of which is the movie "Alive", directed by Frank Marshall and based on the 1974 book by Piers Paul Read.
The consumption of the victims was presented in that film as a form of Eucharist (a comparison made by one of at least 16 survivors) and the meal as a kind of sacrament. Bayona doesn't go that far, though the issues of God, sin, and the cosmic consequences of what they're doing are debated with sobering depth by the actors.
"Will God forgive us?", one asks. God has placed us here, answers another; he will forgive us what we need to do. A third says that "God has nothing to do here, this is just bad luck". The question viewers are forced to ask themselves—and which is part of what has made the crash of Flight 571 a classic—is, "What would I do?" Would I eat, or give in? Does the consumption of human flesh exclude one from the human race?
The crash, which happens very shortly after the 2 1/2 hour film has started, is alarming, the wings detach, the tail flies off on its own (along with many people) and the fuselage tumbles down a slope before coming to rest in a large valley. and covered by snow. Despite all the violence, casualties and claustrophobic intimacy of the plane's fuselage, which will become home for more than two months, one of the most memorable moments occurs outside, as some of the actors are several kilometers away from the downed plane. .
They look back and can't even see it. It's a tiny speck in a vast expanse of snow, and they realize that rescue planes can't, and never will, find them, no matter how often they pass through, in the Western Andes between Chile and Argentina.
The feeling of invisibility and insignificance that grips them - together with the fact that the search has been stopped, as they learn on a radio - is as frightening as the snowstorm that will almost bury them alive.
Bayona, working from a script he co-wrote with Bernat Vilaplana, Jaime Marques and Nicolas Casariego, overlays the metaphysical aspects of "Snow Society" with dangerous locations, near-impossible circumstances, a constant presence of death and a universe, who is perversely silent as to the decision of who shall live and who shall die.
"It's a miracle", says a mother at the end of the film, after being reunited with her son, who replies: "What a miracle?"
For the members of his team up there on the mountain, it was nothing short of miraculous. Those who survive wonder how they did it.
Parrado and Cannesa's journey to finally find help is another chilling aspect of the narrative. But the length of his film is an essential element of Bayona's message about despair and hope and, shall we say, the resilience of the soul. The dirty, in pain, sunburnt people who appear from the mountains are heroes, even though they look like ghosts./WSJ - Bota.al
The film appears on Netflix from Thursday, January 4, 2024
Lini një Përgjigje