Chilling and terrifying, the Netflix film Society of the Snow tells the story of a plane crash in a mountain range and the struggle for survival that the remaining passengers must go through. What makes the film even more haunting is the fact that the story is based on real events. Spanish filmmaker J.A. Bayona brings the story to life, but movie buffs just like you may feel they have seen it before. And, of course, you would be right. Way back in 1993, the same story would be brought to the screen in the movie Alive by director Frank Marshall, starring Ethan Hawke.
Is Society of the Snow the same story as the 1993 movie Alive?
Both films use the story of a plane crash in The Andes in 1972 that left a Uruguayan rugby team stranded in the mountains for 72 days. However, the difference in the films arises in the stylistic approaches that the directors take, and the source material that was used in researching the respective movies.
The 1993 film Alive is based on Piers Paul Read’s 1974 book, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors. Society of the Snow would use a different text to work on, specifically La Sociedad de la Nieve, written by Pablo Vierci, who knew many of the people who were on the plane that crashed. The book would research the facts with incredible detail, and the film goes to great lengths to present an adaptation that is as authentic as possible to the book, and therefore to the actual events that occurred. Perhaps it would be unfair to say that Alive is a more Hollywood version of events, but it might also be fair to say that Society of the Snow does feel a bit more authentic.
Society of the Snow and Alive Plot Summaries Explained
Both films follow the same setup and premise, with a plane crash in 1972 leaving sixteen survivors stranded in the Andes, fighting for survival. Months after the crash, they are finally rescued, but the terrible desperation of their situation had forced them to make a terrible moral decision to survive.
Both films share the premise, as it is based on a well-documented experience — it is only the delivery of the material that changes. Nevertheless, for comparative purposes, here are the official plot synopses for both films courtesy of IMDb.
Alive:
After crash-landing in the snowswept Andes, a Uruguayan rugby team has no choice but to turn to desperate measures in order to survive.
Society of the Snow:
The flight of a rugby team crashes on a glacier in the Andes. The few passengers who survive the crash find themselves in one of the world’s toughest environments to survive.
How did director J.A. Bayona approach Society of the Snow?
The director of the Spanish film felt he wanted to find a new way of presenting the story, and he felt that he could achieve this by exploring ideas not present in the film Alive.
In an interview with ScreenDaily, Bayona would say, “Very little was said about the dead [in Alive]. So to me that was the new angle in the story.” Bayona would avoid ideas in the film that might be considered as having “shock value” by handling that part of the story as sensitively as possible. “Instead of focusing on the person who eats a body, Pablo focused on the person who gives his body to his friends,” says Bayona. “By doing so, we avoided all the sensationalism that can be related to this idea of cannibalism. It was more an act of generosity, of love, of spirituality. So it was a much more human approach.”
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