I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with this story. On October 13, 1972, a young ruby team from Montevideo, Uruguay, boarded a plane for a match in Chile. Their plane ended up crashing on a remote Andean glacier, its fuselage torn off and wings shorn. Anticipating they would be rescued, they waited in the snowy wreckage for help, but none came. When they ran out of food, they were forced to eat from the bodies of those passengers who lost their lives. Eventually, two of the passengers managed to breach the treacherous Andes Mountains and brought help to their teammates left stranded in what was left of their plane. Out of the 45 passengers on that plane, only 16 survived. They were stranded on that glacier for 72 days. The fact that any of them survived is nothing short of a miracle.
This story caused a sensation when first presented on the news, and many of course focused more on the sensational aspects of what happened, namely the cannibalism or reports of it. It was later documented in the 1973 bestselling book “Alive” written by Piers Paul Read. I have not read the book, but I did become aware of this event when I saw the film version of the book also titled “Alive” which was released back in 1993, and starred Ethan Hawke. I remember seeing that at the movie theater I worked at with my brother, and we both dug that nasty plane crash that opened the movie. It was good, but even with a script by John Patrick Shanley of all people, it still felt like just a movie. There didn’t seem to be any real tangible way to truly get at how these people felt as they were stranded in a glacier that was intent on freezing all of them to death. How could you anyway?
Now, just over 35 years after that plane crash occurred, we have a new documentary on the plane crash entitled “Stranded: I’ve Come From A Plane That Crashed On The Mountains.” This one has the advantage of having all the survivors from the crash participate participating in interviews in which they recount the horrors they had to endure, and it was directed by a documentary filmmaker who also happened to be a childhood friend of theirs, Gonzalo Arijon. Through archival footage, interviews, and reenactments of the events, Arijon succeeds in creating a shockingly intimate look at what these people went through in order to survive, and it puts us right into the mindset of the survivors in a way that no movie or book (however well written) could. It is one of the most astonishing portraits I have ever seen about survival put on the big screen.
A documentary with reenactments almost sounds like an oxymoron. Certain other documentaries this year like “American Teen” have been accused of restaging events that happened to the characters, and as a result take away what felt truly real about it. The director of that movie admitted to restaging one even regarding a text message, and it did make for a good emotional moment, so I don’t really hold that against her. I bring this up because the reenactments and restaging of events in “Stranded” serve to illustrate how desolate the circumstances were for these people, and are necessary to show the way they survived it, and how it almost destroyed them. Plus, there is not a lot of archival footage for Gonzalo to work with, and without the reenactments, I’m not sure he would have had much of a documentary.
The archival footage that is in the movie consists of photographs that were taken before and after the crash which are haunting in how they show who these people were and what they ended up becoming. There are also some interviews shot with the survivors after they are rescued, and the audience reacted strongly when the interviewer asked them how they managed to survive. Their response to this at a later news conference brilliantly spells out why they did what they did.
The issue of cannibalism (if you really want to call it that) is handled very sensitively here. The reactions of the survivors to eating the flesh of those who have died goes through a variety of emotions from revulsion of even thinking about it to determination to survive and see their families again. But in the end, who are we to judge them for what they did? These were people pushed to the brink of survival and did what ever they could, and “Stranded” puts us right in their mindset as they made their decision to do what they did. Don’t even think you would have done things differently because it would have meant your death.
If you want to get cynical about it, these people were already dead, so they didn’t have a lot of say in the matter.
But the most astonishing moments from “Stranded” come from the survivors themselves. Their recollections of what they went through are still vivid to them as they were 35 years ago. The participation they gave to this project was invaluable, and we see them with their spouses and children as they go to revisit the site of the crash and go over what happened with them. What they do here is very brave, and their willingness to talk about what went on is very commendable. While this documentary may seem more about death than anything else, it is really more about survival and the power of human spirits when it is in the most dire of circumstances. It is also about the power of friendship and how indestructible it can be.
With the aid of Gonzalo Arijon’s work, we see how specifically the survivors remember details of what happened. We see them lose their friends and of how they died, and of the ways they found themselves surviving like in hitting each other constantly so that the blood would circulate better in their bodies. The moment we see those three men (which later became two) journey out to breach the Andes Mountains, we feel the desperation of the men as well as their dwindling feeling of wanting to survive. All these elements together provide us with the most intimate portrait of this plane crash they could ever hope (or want) to get.
I have to tell you, this has been a tremendous year for movies set in the coldest of environments. Earlier this summer, we had “Frozen River” which took place in the subzero weather of upstate New York. It was like the cold temperatures were seeping right out from the screen as we were watching it (it sure saved money on the AC during the sweltering summer we had in Los Angeles). Then just this past week, I got to see “Let The Right One In” which showed a tender relationship between a young boy and a female vampire in a frigid suburban neighborhood of Sweden. The details of these ferociously cold climates are almost completely dwarfed by the barren coldness that “Stranded” documents. Some of us are spoiled by the elongated summers we have in certain parts of the United States, but nothing we experience here will ever seem as cold as it is in movies like these, most especially “Stranded.”
This documentary gave me one of the most powerfully absorbing experiences I have had watching any kind of movie this year. It is at turns thrilling and harrowing, and in the end it is utterly inspiring as some of these passengers just refused to give up and die. Gonzalo Arijon brilliantly succeeds in capturing the events of this situation in a way no other person could, and it continues the streak of very strong documentaries that have been released so far in 2008.
**** out of ****
This story caused a sensation when first presented on the news, and many of course focused more on the sensational aspects of what happened, namely the cannibalism or reports of it. It was later documented in the 1973 bestselling book “Alive” written by Piers Paul Read. I have not read the book, but I did become aware of this event when I saw the film version of the book also titled “Alive” which was released back in 1993, and starred Ethan Hawke. I remember seeing that at the movie theater I worked at with my brother, and we both dug that nasty plane crash that opened the movie. It was good, but even with a script by John Patrick Shanley of all people, it still felt like just a movie. There didn’t seem to be any real tangible way to truly get at how these people felt as they were stranded in a glacier that was intent on freezing all of them to death. How could you anyway?
Now, just over 35 years after that plane crash occurred, we have a new documentary on the plane crash entitled “Stranded: I’ve Come From A Plane That Crashed On The Mountains.” This one has the advantage of having all the survivors from the crash participate participating in interviews in which they recount the horrors they had to endure, and it was directed by a documentary filmmaker who also happened to be a childhood friend of theirs, Gonzalo Arijon. Through archival footage, interviews, and reenactments of the events, Arijon succeeds in creating a shockingly intimate look at what these people went through in order to survive, and it puts us right into the mindset of the survivors in a way that no movie or book (however well written) could. It is one of the most astonishing portraits I have ever seen about survival put on the big screen.
A documentary with reenactments almost sounds like an oxymoron. Certain other documentaries this year like “American Teen” have been accused of restaging events that happened to the characters, and as a result take away what felt truly real about it. The director of that movie admitted to restaging one even regarding a text message, and it did make for a good emotional moment, so I don’t really hold that against her. I bring this up because the reenactments and restaging of events in “Stranded” serve to illustrate how desolate the circumstances were for these people, and are necessary to show the way they survived it, and how it almost destroyed them. Plus, there is not a lot of archival footage for Gonzalo to work with, and without the reenactments, I’m not sure he would have had much of a documentary.
The archival footage that is in the movie consists of photographs that were taken before and after the crash which are haunting in how they show who these people were and what they ended up becoming. There are also some interviews shot with the survivors after they are rescued, and the audience reacted strongly when the interviewer asked them how they managed to survive. Their response to this at a later news conference brilliantly spells out why they did what they did.
The issue of cannibalism (if you really want to call it that) is handled very sensitively here. The reactions of the survivors to eating the flesh of those who have died goes through a variety of emotions from revulsion of even thinking about it to determination to survive and see their families again. But in the end, who are we to judge them for what they did? These were people pushed to the brink of survival and did what ever they could, and “Stranded” puts us right in their mindset as they made their decision to do what they did. Don’t even think you would have done things differently because it would have meant your death.
If you want to get cynical about it, these people were already dead, so they didn’t have a lot of say in the matter.
But the most astonishing moments from “Stranded” come from the survivors themselves. Their recollections of what they went through are still vivid to them as they were 35 years ago. The participation they gave to this project was invaluable, and we see them with their spouses and children as they go to revisit the site of the crash and go over what happened with them. What they do here is very brave, and their willingness to talk about what went on is very commendable. While this documentary may seem more about death than anything else, it is really more about survival and the power of human spirits when it is in the most dire of circumstances. It is also about the power of friendship and how indestructible it can be.
With the aid of Gonzalo Arijon’s work, we see how specifically the survivors remember details of what happened. We see them lose their friends and of how they died, and of the ways they found themselves surviving like in hitting each other constantly so that the blood would circulate better in their bodies. The moment we see those three men (which later became two) journey out to breach the Andes Mountains, we feel the desperation of the men as well as their dwindling feeling of wanting to survive. All these elements together provide us with the most intimate portrait of this plane crash they could ever hope (or want) to get.
I have to tell you, this has been a tremendous year for movies set in the coldest of environments. Earlier this summer, we had “Frozen River” which took place in the subzero weather of upstate New York. It was like the cold temperatures were seeping right out from the screen as we were watching it (it sure saved money on the AC during the sweltering summer we had in Los Angeles). Then just this past week, I got to see “Let The Right One In” which showed a tender relationship between a young boy and a female vampire in a frigid suburban neighborhood of Sweden. The details of these ferociously cold climates are almost completely dwarfed by the barren coldness that “Stranded” documents. Some of us are spoiled by the elongated summers we have in certain parts of the United States, but nothing we experience here will ever seem as cold as it is in movies like these, most especially “Stranded.”
This documentary gave me one of the most powerfully absorbing experiences I have had watching any kind of movie this year. It is at turns thrilling and harrowing, and in the end it is utterly inspiring as some of these passengers just refused to give up and die. Gonzalo Arijon brilliantly succeeds in capturing the events of this situation in a way no other person could, and it continues the streak of very strong documentaries that have been released so far in 2008.
**** out of ****
I would love to watch this one of these days. IT sounds fascinating.
I did like the film back in 93 too.
Excellent review.