Society of the Snow Ending Explained: This is How Roberto and Nando Save All the Survivors?
Society of the Snow has been available on Netflix since January 4, 2024. It is a Spanish film directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, which documents the stories of the 16 survivors of the 1972 plane disaster. The film tells the true story of the accident, as a film adaptation of the book of the same name by Pablo Verci. The plot sees survivors of the plane crash in the heart of the Andes joining forces to try to return home. Around the fire, thousands of years ago, the first stories of humanity were told. And, from then on, we have done nothing but repeat them. Since Christmas 1972, when a Chilean mule driver met two of the survivors of the “plane that fell in the mountains” in a stream, the world knows perfectly well what happened to the survivors of Flight 571 of the Uruguayan Forces. The Tragedy of the Andes is a contemporary myth and, as such, can be told again and again.
In his latest film, presented at the end of the 80th Venice International Film Festival, JA Bayona brings to the screen the tragic true story of the survivors of flight 571 of the Uruguayan Air Force, which crashed on 13 October 1972 in the (frozen) heart of the Cordillera of the Andes. As we saw in our review, it is an intense work characterized by devastating realism, capable of investigating the real nature of the human being when put to the test in a context in which life itself is not contemplated. What are we willing to do to survive? A question that governs the entire work of the Spanish director and which pushes its limits further and further, almost imperceptibly but inexorably, tracing boundaries from which it is impossible to go back.
Throughout the narrative, we see the survivors of the impact organize themselves to cope with their wounds, the cold but, above all, the lack of food. After exhausting the few supplies available on the plane, the boys – most of whom are profoundly Catholic – find themselves faced with a moral dilemma: is it right, in the name of survival, to feed on the corpses of those who have lost their rate it? A desperate decision that not everyone will feel like making and which, for this reason, will mark the first watershed between those who will make it and those who will lose their lives along the way. But it won’t just be hunger that will test the survivors: the mountain, in fact, will prove to be a bad host and will fall on them several times, reaffirming its superiority. Two months after the disaster, 16 are still alive. 16 human beings lost in the middle of the Andes aware of the fact that help will never arrive or, at least, never in time. If you know the events narrated, you will already know what the epilogue of this tragic story will be; but it’s still worth seeing how Baytona’s film brings those last days of desperate struggle for life to the screen in our explanation of the ending of Society of the Snow.
Society of the Snow: Summary Recap
The plot of Society of the Snow on Netflix begins with a brief introduction to the main characters. We start with Roberto, who is part of the Old Christians Club rugby team, which loses the match. The team’s enthusiasm remains alive as they face another match abroad. The plane takes off normally from Uruguay with around 40 passengers, including the 19 rugby team players and 5 crew members. The climate, however, is not favorable when they approach the Andes Mountain range, between wind and snow.
The pilots lose control of the plane, which crashes into the snow-capped Andes. Some passengers die instantly, while the others begin a long struggle to survive. The plane breaks into two pieces and the survivors are unable to get the pilot’s radio to work to contact the authorities. Already from the first night of this ordeal, those who survived realize that they must huddle with the bodies of the deceased. Meanwhile, the authorities begin to look for them, but the crash site cannot be traced and they are not detected by the rescue planes.
Society of the Snow Ending Explained: This is How Roberto and Nando Save All the Survivors?
After the death of Numa Turcatti, the film’s narrator, Roberto Canessa, Nando Parrado and Antonio Vizintín organize the definitive expedition in search of help. Until now, Parrado and Canessa had been physically preparing to negotiate the steep, snowy slope that protected the Valley, but the death of Numa, who had refused to eat human flesh, made them understand that if they continued to postpone their march, they would all die. in the mountains. The three expedition members carry enough meat for several days but, upon climbing to the nearest peak, they discover that they are surrounded by the Andes. On the horizon, not a single town can be seen, and Canessa and Vizintín resign themselves to returning to the fuselage. However, Parrado points to a remote point, in the mountain range, where there is no snow, and urges Canessa to accompany him. Vizintín, for his part, turns around so that his portion of meat grants Parrado and Canessa a few additional days.
Vizintín informs the survivors waiting on the plane of the change of plans and, with them, he limits himself to waiting for Parrado and Canessa to have a fate that seems increasingly unlikely to them. The expedition extends for five more days, at the end of which Parrado and Canessa begin to descend and follow the course of a stream. While they drink water, Parrado discovers a lizard on the rocks and, when he turns to warn his friend, he discovers that he is staring at a rider who is looking back at him from the other shore. They were saved. From here, Giacchino’s minimalist score takes over the footage: the composer’s notes merge with the rapid run of an orderly who enters, in a hurry, the office of the air rescue service. Meanwhile, through a parallel montage, we see Parrado and Canessa sending the Chilean muleteer what will be one of the most broadcast messages of the last half-century. It began like this: “I come from the plane that fell in the mountains. I am Uruguayan”.
In the fuselage, the exhausted survivors hopelessly tune into the radio once more. Drowsily, they listen to the strains of Schubert’s Ave Maria, gangrenated by static, which is suddenly interrupted, and an announcer with an agitated voice gives them the news they no longer expected to hear. His friends had achieved it. Unlike what is narrated in ¡Viven! , in which the rescue helicopter suddenly appears in the Valley of Tears, Society of the Snow shows the survivors preparing to be rescued, trying to tame their tangled, frozen hair with a comb, soaping their blackened nails, and taking with me the few transportable memories of his days in the mountains.
Through the radio, we hear the names of all the survivors. The one who pronounces them is Carlos Páez, one of the true protagonists of the Tragedy of the Andes, who plays his father, who was the only one who never stopped looking for his son when the government withdrew the planes. rescue. In total, there will be 16 passengers who return from the Valley of Tears. The helicopter tears the air of the mountains when Páez pronounces the last of the names and, after seventy days in the peaks, the survivors mount up and leave. Numa Turcatti’s voice is heard again to say goodbye: “Today my voice sounds with her words,” she announces, since “we were all fundamental and this is our story.” The last images of Society of the Snow show the 16 survivors being reunited with their families and being welcomed by that civilization from which they believed they had been expelled forever.
“What is this crowd doing here?” Numa asks himself as he follows the slow and disoriented atomization of Society of the Snow. “The newspapers talk about the heroes of the Andes,” says Numa. “But they don’t feel like heroes, because they were dead like us and only, they came back.” Before the fade to black, Bayona returns to the abandoned fuselage of the plane, battered by the Andean wind, and now only inhabited by the lost voices of those who did not live to escape the mountain.
What Happened to the 16 Survivors of the Andes Tragedy?
Of the 16 members of the Society of the Snow who returned from the Valley of Tears, 14 of them are alive. Javier Menthol, played by Esteban Bigliardi and the person responsible for ensuring that the survivors had abundant reserves of tobacco, died at the age of 79 due to cancer, while José Luis ‘Coche’ Inciarte died in 2023, at the age of 75. Younger than Menthol, Coche was an engineering student and friend of several of the members of the Old Christian Club. Shortly before he died, he recalled that “that plane was the happiest I traveled on in my life”, The Air Force steward tried to make us sit down without any success.” Carlos Páez, who formed a deep friendship with him, said that Coche was the first person to see Society of the Snow.
Among the survivors, some graduated from universities as prestigious as Stanford (Pedro Algorta), wrote their autobiographies (such as Eduardo Strauch or Carlos Páez), or even became racing drivers and documentary producers for National Geographic. (Nando Parado). One of the most surprising futures is that of Roberto Canessa, who, together with Parrado, undertook the expedition that saved their lives, since the Uruguayan would become a prominent cardiologist, honorary member of the American College of Cardiology, and candidate for the presidency of his country (yes, with discreet results) in 1994.
How Do The Boys Manage to Save Themselves?
Knowing – through the portable radio that they had previously managed to repair – that help would never arrive in time and taking advantage of the beginning of the thaw, Roberto Canessa and Nando Parrado (here played respectively by Matías Recalt and Agustín Pardella) decide to volunteer to undertake an almost suicidal mission: venturing into the mountains, towards Chile, to seek help. After stocking up on food and equipment recovered from the wreckage of the plane, on 12 December 1972 – 61 days after the accident – the boys set off knowing they had at least 10 days of walking ahead of them in the snow and above all, 10 nights to spend outdoors, at 30 degrees below zero. Despite the apparent unfeasibility of the operation, after more than a week of snow as far as the eye can see, Canessa and Parrado reach a valley, which will lead them to a watercourse and, finally, to civilization. The two come across a man on horseback who, having understood the situation, leads them to the local authorities, thus starting the rescue operations of their companions.
What is The Meaning of the Film?
Bayona’s film takes its title from the book that inspired it, the novel by the Uruguayan writer Pablo Vierci, a schoolmate of most of the survivors of the plane crash. Both the literary work and the film adaptation are not intended to be a tribute to the survivors but to those who sacrificed themselves to allow others to move forward. The narrator of the film is, in fact, Numa Turcatti, the last to lose his life before the departure of Canessa and Parrado, thus becoming a source of subsistence for his companions. Before dying, the young man leaves a note with the writing ” There is no greater love than giving one’s life for friends “, effectively consenting to the two explorers and the entire group to feed on his mortal remains. And it is precisely the concept of the group – the society of the title – that is the fulcrum of the narrative, how, by remaining united and pooling their strengths, the boys managed to recreate a sort of normality in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth.
In this sense, what is important is not who survived but how they spent those terrible but also hopeful days, giving life to a snow society in which everyone made it to the end: even those who fell before the arrival of the rescued continued to live inside the bodies (and memories) of those who made it. The film ends with the narrative voice of Turcatti, who reminds the world of the weight of being a survivor, of the sense of guilt that those who have made it must carry with them in the face of others who have lost their lives:
The newspapers talk about the heroes of the Andes, who returned from the dead to meet their parents, their girlfriends, and their children. But they don’t feel like heroes, because they died like us and only they have returned. And remembering us they wonder why we didn’t get back together, what’s the point? Give it meaning, you are the answer. Take care of each other and tell everyone what we did in the mountains.
